When Doctors Are Afraid of Failure

If you can cure a patient who has a serious condition, go ahead and do that. That’s clearly the best scenario. And if you can cure them without making them feel worse than before they came to you, that’s even better.

Before I went to medical school, I thought the work of being a doctor would be all about curing. I’d learn all the diseases and all the medications and I’d be curing patients all over town. It turns out that many of the things that bring patients to the doctor can’t be cured. Often they can be managed and improved, but cure isn’t always on the table. And sometimes the road to cure, such as chemotherapy, radiation, and ICU stays, can be brutal.?

What about when cure isn’t possible?

This obviously makes the patient unhappy, and it makes the doctor unhappy too. We like to fix people’s problems. It makes us feel competent and useful and we enjoy the whole “thank you so much, doctor” thing. It feels good. There is nothing wrong with wanting to cure people, but when we don’t have the skills to stay connected and supportive to patients with incurable illness, we aren’t doctoring to the highest standard.?

For many physicians the inability to cure a patient feels like a failure. Facing a perceived failure is painful and uncomfortable; it feels lousy so the temptation can be to look away. Here is where the problem arises. If we aren’t careful, we can inadvertently reject our patients simply because we are unable to cure them. That sounds crazy, right? No physician does this on purpose. Yet many physicians do exactly this, completely unaware of the pain that they are causing their patients.

In medical school I did not learn many skills for walking beside a patient who could not be cured. Yet in my clinical practice, these skills have been some of the most important ones. Patients who are facing serious illness often look to their physicians for guidance and support; they do not want to walk this road alone.

We can learn skills to be excellent sherpas, guiding our patients on their challenging journeys.

It’s OK if you’re not sure how to help your patient cope; just don’t turn away. Bring your humanity and the image of walking beside them on a challenging path. Tell them that you wish things were different. Help them manage their symptoms. Invite them to talk about difficult topics with you that they are afraid to raise with their loved ones

Just don’t turn away.

Reach out anytime,

Dr. Chiaramonte

P.S. I am offering a free webinar for physicians on Integrative Symptom Management this Saturday 9/24 at 12:30 EDT by Zoom. Sign up at?www.integrativepalliative.com/training. Send this link to a physician friend! If you sign up you’ll get the replay so no worries if you can’t make it live. Sign up today.