Michael J.

Ryan Torres ID#:10-8042 Class: Palliative Medicine Professor: Jeanette Dominguez

Written Analysis: The Doctor We will begin this small essay trying to explain medical relationships with doctors and patients plus medical care. To do this we should try to refresh the memory of our reader by commenting of various scenes of the film where the patient s has been treated poorly. This is view through the protagonist of the film whose transition from being a doctor to later on being a patient takes a dramatic turn of events on leading to treated patients better. At the beginning of the film The Doctor there is shown various scenes where the doctor Jack McGee is playing music, talking to his colleague and joking around while doing surgery. Even so, when called upon about an expert medical opinion, he openly mocks his other colleague Elijah that usually explains the surgery to his unconscious patient, not considering him a good doctor. Another example is when he goes to pick up his wife, he answers a patients called and puts it on speaker so he can joked around with his wife. There is another scene, a very important one, where the doctor as chief resident of surgery is walking with medical students and scrubs telling them that is not good to get involved with patients. That as a surgeon he is the one making the judgment and is better to be detach. A student ask: isn t it unnatural to not get involved? Dr. McGee answers its completely unnatural, to open a person and perform surgery. Another student asks: it isn t more the better reason to care? He tells his students: No, the surgeon has only one shot to get in, fix it and get out. The next scene finds the doctor talking to one of his patients who at first is with a priest, but the doctor sends him away to do a check up and instead of encouraging and establishing a doctor-patient communication process, he only asks his students what was the patient room number and record file, what was the surgical problem/procedure and how is it treated during surgery and post surgery. Dr McGee since the beginning of the film has had some sore throat problems, so he goes to this throat specialist in the hospital. He notices that the female doctor does not greet him, does not look at him directly to his eyes and instead of explaining the laryngoscopy procedure, she just jams the tube right along his throat and when giving the news of a growing tumor. The next day he goes with his wife and waits for more than 30 minutes and he feels he s being mistreated because he has worked as attending physician for more than 11 years, and he wasn t given any paperwork to file out when he first arrived. He refuses to go in a wheelchair, even if the male nurse tells him that it is because of hospital rules that if he falls the hospital is held accountable. He asks for a private room, instead he was given a public sharing space where he encounter another patient who feels the doctor doesn t explain him enough and lies half of the time. When the doctor is on his way to the emergency room to be perform the biopsy he sees two doctors arguing about a patients and he expresses an opinion as a patient, the doctors looks confused and he cleverly answers yes, it talks, amazing. In another scene the nurse confused Doctor McGee with the patient next door Mr. Brown and was given a barium enema. When given the results of his tumor, the tumor was malignant. He wanted throat surgery but the doctor

instead told him it was better for him to do radiation because it has 80% probability rate of success and he would not loose his voice box. When Doctor Elijah came to offer companionship to his colleague doctor McGee feels mad because the whole medical staff in the hospital knew about his condition, and he is so angry that his confidentiality was broken. When he goes the next day to radiotherapy he is angry that he has to fill out the same forms that he already did. When he s scheduled to do radiotherapy he gets on the table but the doctors don t explain the procedure he feels scared, no body explain him the procedures, he ask for the lead paper, and the physician tells him you don t need it, but don t move. Doctor McGee was supposed to start daily treatment but the doctor misses his appointment because he was held up, so the doctor feels that has his trust been violated. When he wants to check results of his MRI they don t want to give him the results because he has to get clearance from his attending physician but he argues that it his record and he should be able to view it. During his visits to radiotherapy he befriends a patient with grade 4 Brain tumor which she knows she will die but he tries to give her false hope lying about a patient his father had who survived same diagnosis. He also tell her the next day that the MRI would have confirmed the diagnosis but the insurance company control what test should be received concerning money status, because MRI costs 1,000 dollars. While doing his job as attending staff doctor he asks one of his medical students: what s the status of the patient? The medical student answers: the terminal patient of 1217 . Dr. McGee demands more respect for the patient Mr. Winter. When he attends a patient at his office, that has to have replacement of heart, he for the first time feels emotionally attach when the patient tell him that he has full confidence on him and gives him a warm big hug. The radiotherapist tells him he is concern that the tumor is not shrinking but doesn t tell him anything more so when he visits the throat specialist, she tells him the tumor is growing. That makes Dr. McGee feel very surprised. She wants to perform surgery on him in the afternoon but he doesn t want in the afternoon because surgeons get tired so he wants another day but she tells him: I m a doctor and you re my patient and I tell you when the surgery is when I m available . The next day he goes and asks for his file because the female throat specialist has not been honest with the prognosis and she has not established the relationship a doctor should do with her patients. Doctor McGee tells her she doesn t have the slightest idea of what s he s feeling, and when he looks at his file it written terminal. He informs his best friend and colleague Dr. Murray that his schedule a partial laringiectomy but cannot testified in his colleague s behalf because he tore a paper where it was written the doctor knew of the history of tromboplebitis but did the surgery any way. The last thing in the film is that when he returns as attending physician he tells his medical students to thinks as a patient, so he designs techniques that will help them understand what a patient feels, and that the patient needs to have a special care and they should develop a relationship because the patients trust their lives on doctor s hand. For last, we have to dissect topics that can be derived from the scenes this author has commented. For starters Dr McGee learns the hard way what patients feel when they are treated poorly in a hospital. We should say that in various scenes regarding patient s care: a. Confidentiality of the patient violated b. Privacy of the patient was violated

c. It was never established a good doctor-patient relationships. d. The patient owns the medical record; the physician is only the keeper. e. The communication of the multidisciplinary team was disorganized; it should be encourage better communication skills. f. The doctors should explain procedures and diagnosis in a non technical simplistic way. g. The doctor should always answer any question the patients have. h. The feelings and opinions of a patient regarding treatment options should always be taken to consideration. i. The doctors should manage carefully bad news. j. The doctor should accommodated surgery or procedures to the patient s availability. k. The doctors should always try to accommodate patients care according to the patient. l. The doctors should always explain procedures before beginning one, because most patients don t know what there in for. m. Colleagues should be treated as equal. n. We should not do procedures according to monetary status or what the insurance thinks it right. o. We should make the waiting period shorter. For us as medicine students we should treat patients as we would like to be treated ourselves, that is what s all about, a taste of our own medicine. To do this we should respect patient as human beings and consider their beliefs, values and principles. The patient ultimately decides what s best for him or her.