A few weeks ago, I went to a dermatologist to have something on my nose removed. He said less than two sentences to me, asked me one question he didn’t listen to the answer to, ignored my protests, had a nurse hold me down, stuck a large needle in my nose with no warning, and then dug the thing out with a scalpel even though the anesthesia was barely working.
He removed it with no scarring, and insurance paid for it, so I guess I can’t complain too much, but man, did he have to be such an asshole?
Why are so many doctors such jerks? Most likely, it’s because of the way they’re trained to think. But now, it seems, some are trying to remedy the problem by getting doctors to read literature. (via)
Said one doctor: “If you want to understand what someone who is dying is going through, the highs and lows, the emotions, read Tolstoy’s `The Death of Ivan Illyich.’ … One hundred years before Kubler-Ross identified the stages of dying, Tolstoy had it.”
Reading literature helps doctors to understand their patients, to empathize with them, and to better comprehend the less concrete aspects of illness and the experience of living. One study showed that these programs made significant gains in doctor performance and in the doctor’s overall well-being.
“So much of the expectations on them are black and white, to have an answer. (Literature) helps them fit into that hard space, of not necessarily knowing the answer,” says Elizabeth Sinclair, the coordinator of the program in Maine that started this trend.
All of which is, undoubtedly, a good thing. But now that it’s being conclusively shown that the humanities actually do amazing things for people whose job it is to save lives, could we maybe get some funding over here? (And I’m not even going to get into what the humanities could do for lawyers, politicians, bankers, marketing consultants, and other empathy-deprived groups)
Because right now, as someone about to go on the job market in the humanities, I can tell you that it’s looking bleak. Humanities budgets are being cut worldwide, and humanities teachers are being cast aside like an ex you accidentally slept with again after a long night of drinking.
Politicians and other education funders seem to think that humanities teachers and practitioners are like leeches, creepy-looking blood-suckers that feed on the funding sources of other, more sensible, more practical, more hygienic positivists. But now it turns out that, like leeches, we’re actually helpful sometimes. So maybe they should keep us around? Maybe we could even teach them how to stop being assholes.
7 responses
Oliver Sacks’s book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” is pretty amazing in this regard. It’s a beautiful book, in its combination of clinical yet empathetic writing.
Check out the whole career of William Carlos Williams. The guy was a country doctor for the extent of his adult life, delivered babies during the day and went home and wrote a dizzying amount of influential prose and poetry. What a guy. Also Deleuze, in Essays Critical And Clinical, long understood the clinical effects of writing. Excellent work here.
I live in a world of doctors, and must say that MANY of them are very, very literary. Not only does this not help them, in most cases, to be more empathetic or less assholish, it actually contributes to a certain air of superiority that is really the problem in the first place. See, when you can save lives, you can’t help thinking that makes you greater than the little man who knows not what his own symptoms or anatomy might add up to. What doctors need is not so much empathy (which they actually try to “teach” at some medical schools now, god love ’em), but humility. Physicians and nurses both need to appreciate that it is a privilege and an honor to be invited into the intimacy of another human being’s need and vulnerability. Physicians are taught in their first anatomy class to approach the cadaver with this kind of humble reverence–this is a whole life, a whole person you have before you–yet they so easily forget to treat the living this way. More than anything they need to learn that they are but one factor that can improve a person’s life. Literature is another factor, and if it can help them gain this perspective, by all means, let’s try it.
@Belle — I agree wholeheartedly that if a book is only read in order for a doctor (or anyone, including many somewhat pretentious writers, really) to be able to feel superior to others, than that book isn’t doing any good. But I think being humble is part of being empathetic, no? Or at least it should be if you’re doing it right. 🙂 I think there’s lots I wasn’t able to get into in this short write-up about how to read, what sort of programs might work and what might not, etc. But the point is that you’re right. Moving eyes over words doesn’t in itself do anything. In fact, if people are doing it just to inflate their egos, it can even be counterproductive. In order to get anything out of it, you have to read with a mind towards feeling something.
That’s why I think these book clubs they’re doing are such a good idea, and why humanities should be taught in social settings, and why literature and classes that lead to discussion about it should be better funded.
It’s true! I’m just hella jaded.
Ha! Yeah, me too.
What study do you refer to in the 5th paragraph? I would like to look it up!
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.