Since the 1990s, the doctor-patient relationship has been eroding, according to a recent article in the Boston Globe. In response to the increasingly assembly-line approach to health care and a wave of high-profile medical malpractice cases in the late 1980s and early 1990s, patients began to get more involved in their health care. Since the 1990s, patients have also had increased access to medical information via the internet and have started coming to doctor’s appointments prepared with questions. Whereas people used to trust their doctor out of a combination of necessity, long-term relationships, and a general deference to authority, that trust was eroded by evidence that doctors didn’t necessarily know as much as they let on, and, beyond that, often made grievous errors.
Emergency room errors and surgical errors (such as amputating the wrong limb, or, in the case of mastectomies, the wrong breast) in particular made people wary of their healthcare providers. Also, attention to the tendency of doctors to over-prescribe medication or prescribe untested or defective medications because of their ties to pharmaceutical companies, made people skeptical of their doctors. In addition, patients now found themselves with a new resource for obtaining and sharing information, the internet, which has become crowded with all manner of medical advice. Now patients demand to know exactly how they are being treated and why, and doctors, already harried and harassed, are responding with hostility.
In some cases, doctors respond with the worst form of negligence, by simply dropping the patient with a 30-day notice to find a new doctor.
Although some patients go too far, by verbally abusing or physically threatening staff, this behavior on the part of physicians is reprehensible, especially since doctors themselves are largely to blame for the current situation.
If your doctor refuses to answer your questions, listen to your concerns, or drops you in the middle of treatment, causing you to suffer personal injury, you may have legal recourse. Contact the medical malpractice attorneys at the Law Offices of Barry G. Doyle, P.C. today for a free initial consultation.
