What Makes a Truly Good Doctor?

Ali Tabatabaey -- In my eyes, internal medicine is the toughest clinical area of them all. The knowledge is so vast and the diseases so overlapping, that if anyone can keep track of what’s going on here, they are not going to have any trouble anywhere else. It’s here that the final but most important ingredient to becoming a good doctor is put to the ultimate test: Clinical Judgment.

That is why, if you look a bit closer during your internal medicine training, you’ll realize that the demographic characteristics of your class are changing! The students who used to be ranked first and carried the report cards with most A+ on them might suddenly not seem so successful when it comes to treating patients. On the other hand, the students who had always been looked down upon because of their low marks during basic sciences and even externship, might actually seem like they’ve turned on their turbo engines.

It’s almost as if learning the stuff you need to know is one thing, and actually practicing what you’ve learnt is a totally different thing. It’s like being warped from one world into another without warning.

If you look around you can find lots of interns and even some practicing doctors that are very knowledgeable, but when it comes to treating patients, they often can’t find the best way and end up requesting lots of lab and para-clinic studies. When you’re drowning in a sea of knowledge you will grab anything in sight, fearing that you might miss something. Approaching every patient from the shortest and most cost effective path is a delicate skill that many textbook docs fail to master.

So don’t forget: on your way up this ladder, always have the patients in mind. Figuring out the true cause of their illness, using the least amount of cost and time, is a very tricky task that will ultimately separate the okay docs from the best.

All I’m trying to say is that knowing all the textbooks and even clinical data still doesn’t make you a good healer. Now, not knowing these things probably makes you a bad one, but still, becoming a good doctor is much harder than it seems.

April 18, 2007