With advances in medical technology, the healing art of doctor-patient relationships is being lost: Dr. Ho Ping Kong
Today, medical technology works wonders. We can watch the working of the brain with fMRIs, and perform surgery from thousands of kilometres away. But Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong, senior consulting physician with Toronto's University Health Network, believes that even with the rise of technological prowess, and the ever-narrowing areas of medical specialist expertise, the personal relationship between physician and patient is still essential.
"Over the past 15, 20, maybe 30 years, we have gone too far away towards the side of technology, as a result, we have paid less attention to the human part of it," Dr. Ho Ping Kong tells As It Happens guest host Susan Bonner.
In Dr. Ho Ping Kong's book, The Art of Medicine: Healing and the Limits of Technology, co-written by journalist Michael Posner, the book examines some of the elements of medicine that can't be done with a machine, or taught in a classroom."I view medicine as composing of two parts," Dr. Ho Ping Kong continues, "one's a technical, scientific, machine-oriented part and the other is a human part. The human part deals with using our human faculties, our ability to see things ... to listen to things, to feel things, to palpate things.
"It also deals with the emotional side of medicine, the ability to be empathetic, to sense that something is wrong and then to be able to do something about it. It's an extension of compassion. The art of medicine also includes dealing with things that we are uncertain about, the grey zones of medicine, of thinking outside the box. The art is also using technology wisely."
Dr. Ho Ping Kong believes that students are inadvertently being desensitized to the human condition during their training.
"We know that students enter with high motivation to be humane physicians and over years, unfortunately, those qualities that we all respect, we all want in our physicians, tend to be eroded. This is well documented in many studies now."
Why does this happen?
"It happens because of our hospital system that exposes people to the sickest patients. In that environment, it's easy to start developing a toughness that wasn't there before. So even though we believe that we teach the curriculum appropriately, I think they're exposed to a hidden curriculum, in which there's a downside to being a really good physician, where you're sort of bombarded each day with things that make you less empathetic, less compassionate, less caring about patients."