by Ian Rowe
Imagine you’re a newly admitted patient in the burn unit of a local hospital center. You were eager to cook the perfect steak at a family barbeque, but you miscalculated the coals' heat and distance from your lighter fluid, delivering a painful burn on your right hand. To prevent lasting damage and encourage recovery, you decide to treat your burn at the local hospital and assess the extent of the physical damage.
When asked to rate the extent of the painful sensations on a scale, you’re hesitant to express how discomforting the feeling within your hand truly is. You know they can see the redness and the irritation visibly, so in the interest of honesty and transparency, you convey the extent of your pain as being a “7 out of 10” on their scale. The health staff then gain more knowledge regarding your physical and psychological state and administer a greater dosage of medication to help offset the intense burning sensation you feel with your injury. They perform intermedial checkups to catalog your condition while ensuring you feel safe and stable. You leave the hospital after some time, feeling satisfied with the care you received.
Had you undermined the level of pain you were experiencing, you may have been subjected to a lesser dosage of medication, decreasing the likelihood of your pain subsiding with time. Simultaneously, the physical extent of the damage could be assessed by the health staff as being “less than severe” when your psychological state would more readily characterize the pain as “severe and prominent”, increasing your physical discomfort and dissatisfaction with your medical care.
This dissatisfaction, however, would be caused by your lack of transparency rather than by human error and miscalculation on the part of your doctors and nurses. It can be pretty easy to wish to appear “strong” or otherwise “unaffected” by the pervasiveness of a mental or physical ailment. After all, it is an intrinsic aspect of human nature to want to appear non-bothersome and low-maintenance. However, there is no value you can put on your mental and physical health. In truth, it is essential to remember that your doctor, nurse, and physician are there to assist you and deliver the best healthcare services imaginable.
It is not in a healthcare professional’s principal mission that you should needlessly suffer and endure pain due to a lack of communication, shame, or a desire to appear non-bothersome. When you communicate openly and consistently regarding the extent of your condition, you increase the awareness of others regarding what you’re experiencing and how best to treat your condition to minimize your pain and suffering.
This open communication has ramifications for other patients as well. Suppose you have what appears to be a relatively innocent physical injury at the surface level but is, in actuality, quite painful and intrusive. You can then convey this to your trusted doctor to encourage more outstanding care at the treatment site. These healthcare workers can then use this experience as a reference for other patients who enter the hospital with similar conditions and receive more excellent care due to their openness to what they are feeling.
It is essential to conclude that while superb open communication is necessary from patients to healthcare workers, this can be challenging when in conjunction with systemic biases such as racism and sexism. Just as patients are human beings predisposed to various ideological beliefs, so are healthcare professionals. These harmful frameworks can lead to instances of racial discrimination or a lack of sufficient treatment due to prejudice.
There is no easy solution to correcting prejudices within the healthcare field. However, using your voice to communicate what you’re experiencing, whether at the social, physical, or mental level, is just one step you can take towards helping to close the gap of understanding between a doctor and their patient.
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