Written By: Dr Aniruddha Malpani | Updated : June 30, 2017 12:55 PM IST
Articles on medical corruption always attract a lot of interest. Patients worry about whether their doctor is honest or not; journalists pontificate about what we need to do to clean up the system; and senior doctors bemoan the declining standards of medical ethics. Doctor bashing has always been popular, but we also need to worry about the impact of these articles on doctors. Bad doctors are pretty shameless and will devise new ways of gaming the system. However, the good ones wonder why they ever became doctors in the first place. All doctors both good and bad end up being tarred with the same brush, as a result of which, every consultation seems to become a doctor versus patient confrontation. Doctors don't enjoy practicing medicine any more and if patients cannot trust their doctor, they will never be able to get better.
Doctor's Day is supposed to be an occasion for celebration. All of us are going to require doctors at some point in our life. We needed them when we were born; we will need them when we fall sick; and we will need them when we are dying.
The most important thing is to be able to trust a doctor. We need to be confident that he/she will provide us with the best medical care. However, articles like these sow mistrust , and damage the fragile doctor-patient relationship which is at the heart of good medicine. Even worse, while these articles are good at documenting problems, they fail to provide solutions.
This is why today I would like to talk about some of the good things doctors do. My focus is going to be very specific, and I am going to talk about how doctors like me, create and use online tools in order to educate and empower patients with information therapy.
One of the key methods of creating trust is education. If we teach patients about their medical treatment and the options they have; their confidence in doctors will increase dramatically. Most patients do their research online, because they are thirsty for information. However, they often find Dr Google is unreliable and many get even more confused as a result of their online searches. They would much rather get this information from a real, live doctor.
Good doctors have always educated their patients, so that they have realistic expectations of their medical treatment, and can work together with the doctor to get the best medical outcome. However, doctors are busy people, and it's hard for them to be able to spend as much time as their patient needs face-to-face, in the clinic.
The good news is that because so many patients now do their research online, doctors are now using digital tools in order to reach out to them. While it's expensive and time consuming to create these, once they have been published online, they can be used multiple times, and the cost of downloading them is very little.
Apart from that, doctors are now making apps for mobile phones, like MyFertilityDiary that helps patients track their fertility cycles and therefore makes their IVF treatment cycles more likely to be successful. After using these tools, patients understand that we -- as doctors -- are doing our best to put them first. Our openness and transparency increases the trust and confidence they have in us considerably .
Not only can people now look up credible information online, but they can also get in-depth knowledge via DVDs that are usually available in all regional languages.
Today, thanks to the internet, doctors now have the ability to reach out to thousands of patients easily. Going online helps doctors to become more available , affordable and accessible. Patients appreciate this, since they do not need to travel to the clinic to connect with their doctor.
By prescribing and dispensing Information Therapy the right information for the right person, at the right time, doctors can regain the trust of their patients once again.
The author Dr Aniruddha Malpani is an IVF specialist who is also very passionate about improving patient knowledge and patient-doctor relationships. He is a pioneer in the field of information therapy the right information at the right time for the right person and blogs at http://blog.drmalpani.
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