DO WE PUT TOO MUCH TRUST AND FAITH IN DOCTORS?

ANDREW SMITH

As children one of the first people we are taught to trust implicitly is our doctor or GP. My own personal experience and quite possibly the same experience as millions of others is that your doctor is a professional person beyond reproach and is accorded due reverence by everybody because of the hard training and invaluable skills they have. We rely on them for so much in our lives and put so much trust and faith in them that in some ways they can assume an almost mythical status whatever our status or position in life.

But the problem here is that we can forget that they are only human beings as we are and therefore are prone to the same flaws as we are. Over the years many doctors have been exposed as such Harold Shipman and Hawley Crippen to name but two. Yet this two people who committed horrific acts have done nothing to tarnish the reputation of doctors in the same way that the reputation of bankers has been tarnished because of the economic meltdown of a few years ago.

So while we put doctors on a pedestal from which there is virtually no chance of them being knocked off, we also tend to forget that they are only human. When one of them is exposed for being something else they are a rotten apple in amongst an orchard of perfection. The reliance we have on them to keep us going both physically and mentally is immense and for this reason we put so much faith and trust in them.

However what happens when you feel that your trust and faith has been broken? What happens when the one person you have put all your faith and trust in over many, many years lets you down, even if it’s only in your eyes?

Do you lose all trust and faith in doctors and the medical system? Do you believe that you have come across one rotten egg and they are not all bad? Or do you try and put it all behind you and hope that your trust and faith in doctors will eventually be restored in time?

Of course there is no definitive answer to this question as there are too many personal and complex factors involved and each and every loss of trust and faith is different for each individual.

But maybe if we lower our expectations of doctors we won’t feel as let down when our trust and faith is broken. And then maybe our childhood expectations of doctors that have been instilled since an early age won’t end up being just shattered dreams.