"Most of us go to Med School with the best of intentions--to heal people," she said. But an unfortunate and all-too-common outcome is the de-personalization of medical care. Sure, young doctors are trained to take emotion out of their approach so that they can treat their patients effectively, but this often means that there's little empathy and no ability to see beyond scientific rationales for causes behind symptoms.
This reminds me of my recent round of treament for the nagging jaw pain I have from grinding my teeth. I've been wearing a "deprogrammer" (aka: a retainer) for the past few weeks that supposedly makes it impossible for my back teeth to grind. And yet my teeth have figured out how to get around this contraption and grind anyway. My dentist's solution: Sand down the back teeth until they no longer touch. After two of these treatments and more discomfort I had to say, enough. Maybe I need to look at WHY I'm grinding my teeth all the time and be more cognizant of when I'm doing it so that I can train myself to stop it. I appreciate that the experts are trying to treat the problem painlessly and with little effort on my part, but in the end, I need to address the source of the problem some other way than tactically, more mindfully.
My friend agrees that this occurs often in her profession: There is often a pill or procedure meant to treat but not cure. Doctors don't see their patients holistically, but as a series of issues, and they are hired to solve just the one the patient can articulate. "We've been trained to take the love out of what we do," she said.It's possible, I've concluded, for well-meaning, well-educated professionals to be smart and stupid all at the same time.
This discovery I made while walking through Golden Gate Park with my friend translates across countless industries and business in general. In the new media world that I live in the question of properly measuring the effectiveness of online advertising pervades all long-term discussions of its future. We have "smart" technology that can tell us when users are exposed to ads, when they click on them, and sometimes when they do something in reaction to these ads. Yet we can't properly measure the value of these clicks and of the places where these clicks come from that might have encouraged a purchase or a positive brand association. I love to point out that an incredibly influential blogger could host the most eye-opening discussion on her blog, generating priceless word of mouth, leading to sales, and yet this discussion could conceivably count as a mere page view using our current system. And even using the most premium rates available to compensate for placing ads on this site, the monetary value of this conversation is pennies. This may sound wonderful to the media buyer, but consider that this same buyer could be spending so much more--thousands of dollars--to advertise on sites that in effect game the system by being rich with page views but devoid of authentic, actionable content. This is why the industry is bent on establishing metrics that better indicate bloggers' influence and the quality of engagement on sites. They are trying to measure love.
Likewise, back to health care. Doctors are increasingly paid for the drugs they administer, expensive procedures they may or may not do themselves, and are versed in "moving patients" as quickly as possible. The current system does not compensate them for sitting with patients who have just been told they have cancer, for telling patients that they do not recommend pills but rather self-esteem to help them with their hypertension. Everyone must be treated clinically (without love) making it too difficult to adequately diagnose those who truly need a medical approach. Instead they insist on grinding our teeth to the nubbins (sorry, I'm still bitter).
My friend was passionate about her desire to apply love to medicine and was stumped on where to begin. I have no doubt that she will figure that out, and I won't be surprised that in the process she builds a new business. That's what entrepreneurs do: discover how to infuse love into what we do. And that's our dilemma: once we discover how to infuse love into what we do, how do we continue to do that, as we take on administrative issues, new people that must internalize the mission, and new desires that request our precious time?
Infusing love into our work, this is the luxury we ultimately have over our corporate counterparts, and it's the first thing we stand to lose when we become successful at what we do.
