The Patient’s Expectations in the United States

Abstract

‘… American doctors, whether rural family practitioners or high-tech surgeons, face expectations from their patients, from their own profession, and from the society at large that are utterly unrealistic on a day-to-day basis. They are asked to be Renaissance men and women in an age when that is no longer possible; they are expected to be ultimate healers, technological wizards, total authorities. (When a physician refuses to accept those expectations and limits herself to areas of special expertise, she is criticized for being too narrow, or for being concerned only with disease and not with health. When she tries to be a generalist, she is criticized — or sued — for her lack of expertise.) Such expectations add to a rising tide of suspicions of and accusations directed at doctors and medicine, as well as a growing feeling of uncertainty among doctors themselves about the nature of doctoring and of medicine in our society. No wonder that — despite her prestige, her salary, her power — the physician today is a wounded healer. Who could live up to such a world of expectations without either crumpling or hiding behind the masks of ominscience and omnipotence?’ [11].