Why?

Why do medical doctors take hope away from patients?

A physician's duty is to provide the best care possible for their patients. Sometimes this means thinking "outside the box". This means going beyond their training in school or conferences, and not following the pathway thinking of "if a, then b". Perhaps the answer to a patients need is d, or k. Maybe the answer is beyond a. This is thinking outside the box.

One thing I noticed early in my career is that patients who visit naturopaths have often spent months or years going to MD's and due to a lack of improvement in health, they, as a last resort, come to a naturopath. The patient has exhausted all the tricks the MD has and now comes to me for a miracle after having wasted months or years on "accepted" medical care and no improvement. Naturopaths are often the doctor of last resort.

Frequently, these patients would tell me, "My doctor told me there is nothing that can be done to help me"; "My doctor told me my only hope is chemotherapy/radiation therapy"; "My doctor said I had to have my gallbladder/ovaries/uterus removed". "My doctor told me there is nothing wrong with me, he wants me to go see a psychologist".

These patients would come to me for help and hope.

Hope is a major aspect of healing. The worst thing a doctor can do is remove hope from a patient. Studies show that when an oncologist tells a patient that "you have six months to live", most of the patients who are told this will die within six months. Why? Is it because the oncologist is such a wizard he knows how long a patient will live? No, it's because he has put that time frame in a patient's mind and that becomes a powerful truth for that person (a self-fulfilling prophecy). The mind is a powerful healer. If you take the hope away from the patient you take a powerful healing option away. Doctors do not have the right and should not assume the right to do so.

A doctor should not lie to a patient, but should never take hope away. Patients have a right to their hope; and hope can heal.

As a doctor I always respected the "four" bodies of each patient. These are:

1. The physical body
2. The mental body (mind)
3. The emotional body
4. The spiritual body

All four must be addressed by a physician. If any one of the bodies become "out of balanced" then illness, or "dis-ease" will occur. Therefore all need to be in balance for health. This is part of the mind-body connection. At various times a physician must be able to treat one or multiple for health to return.

I always looked at the four bodies when my patients came to see me, and worked to balance them, usually with outstanding results even after a patient had been ill for a long time and treated by other doctors with no positive results.

Patients would often comment, "You are the first doctor to give me hope", "Why did my other doctor say I could not get better?" "All the other doctors just wanted to put me on dialysis..."

Good questions.

My point today is it is the patient's right to have hope in being healed from a disease. A doctor does not have the right to take that hope away from a patient. Hope can go a long way in the healing process and must be nurtured by all parties involved. If you have a disease, one of the strongest medicines available...is hope.