A doctor - high humanistic dignity or a service producer

Рамазанова А.М., Фарзалиева Н.А.

ФГБОУ ВО Саратовский ГМУ им. В.И. Разумовского Минздрава РФ

Кафедра иностранных языков

Relevance of the problem: Nowadays there is a rapid development of the society. Most countries are in post-industrial stage of society’s development. That assumes that most people work in services sector. Medicine is also involved in this process as an area which is closely connected with society. Does it mean that a doctor is a service producer and the patient is a client or a doctor is a person with high humanistic values? 

Goals and objectives:

• to determine the image of a modern doctor
• to find out the factors that affect society’s perception of the doctor’s image
• to identify the dependence of essence of the physician on the stage of society’s development and economic system.

At all times the profession of a doctor has always been considered to be respected and prestigious as well as professions of a teacher, a policeman and others. First of all it is connected with high authority among people and its success is partly determined by attractive image.

The image of physician depends on a number of factors. The main of them are mass media, doctor’s attitude to his job and colleagues, society’s attitude to medicine and people who work in this sphere and patient- physician relationship.

Transition of society to a post-industrial stage has also affected the medicine. Thus, some people believe that medicine is a services sector and a patient is a consumer of services. A large number of private medical clinics and the increasing presence of the internet in in everyday life contribute to this belief.

The nowadays reality is that patients can have a positive or negative attitude toward a physician which depends on a number of reasons such as medical institution’s reputation, patients reviews and etc. In this case online communities, forums, websites of medical institutions play an important role in influence on potential patients’ opinions and choices. That is why medical care is thought to be a provision of services. Is that a service depends on each doctor’s attitude to his job. Nevertheless, there is no this kind of problems at private medicine where patients have to pay and they are the only reason that makes private clinics exist.

Transition from socialism to capitalism at the end of the 20th century influenced greatly people’s world outlook. The goal of the work is no more the benefit to society and government but personal interests. Private income became the foremost aim. The same tendency can be noticed in medicine, where helping, treating, saving lives has always been considered prestigious and doctors have always been a special “caste” in society, a real intelligentsia with high degree of morality. But times change, young physicians don’t want sincerely to help people. They take medicine as an opportunity of a good income.

It was interesting to know what the future generation of doctors thinks about this problem. 90 fifth year students were interviewed. 40 of them ( 44%) agreed that medicine is a services sector, 40 ( 44 %) disagreed with this statement, 10 students( 12%) found it difficult to answer.

Relationships in medical community also play an important role in determining the modern essence of medicine: duty or service. Earlier more experienced specialists transferred their skills and abilities to young generation that has just graduated staying by, helping and prompting while young doctors were operating. But now physicians perceive each other as competitors in receiving a profit and every young doctor is a future rival. Thus, doctors’ attitude to each other also makes the medicine a provision of services.

Patient – physician relationship are also changed. Cooperation is implemented on the principles of a social contract. Patients enter a contract for medical care with a medical institution or using an insurance company. Each party to a contract incurs obligations and each party achieves its own benefit. The doctors started working on the patient's comfort but not on the treatment: how to make sure that the research will be completed on time, without queues for MRI and CT, that the patient will receive the medications on time, which are not found in the hospital because of a reduction of financing. Doctors began to take care of patient’s satisfaction with the time he spent in the hospital and did not write a complaint to the Ministry of Health.

Most of physicians in Russia think that they just treat but don’t produce services. Moreover, most of Russian doctors will be offended if somebody tells them that they work in the services sector. Often we can hear from Russian doctor during the conversation with a patient: you’re not a client, you are a patient.

American physicians have absolutely other point of view. In the USA medicine is a service and first of all doctor is a profession. There is a great quantity of complaints against the medics in the USA. A large number of them are associated with dissatisfaction with the attitude and the way of doctor’s communication, but not with the quality of the treatment. That’s why a great attention is paid to doctor-patient communications especially in the universities. Unfortunately, due attention to communication is not paid in Russia. Likely, point is that the medicine is not considered as a services sector.

To sum it up, it is impossible to answer the question precisely: what is the profession of a doctor- high humanistic dignity or a service producer. Nowadays, it is impossible to classify medicine only as a service; "consumers" of this service turn to doctors not on whim, but on real necessity, and the result of treatment depends not only on modern equipment, expensive drugs, but also on the doctor’s attitude to the patient. And for sure the patient will feel much better if he is treated by a physician interested in the outcome of the disease, not just in the purse. But taking into account modern realities, a doctor cannot live on satisfying his moral debt, and therefore material prosperity is not the last thing the doctor thinks about.

However, there is a tendency to consider a doctor a producer of services. Soon only real fanatics who want to help or only people who want to earn money will work in medicine. And this is not the fault of young doctors, their tutors or professors. Medicine is the most obvious part by which you can judge the whole of society. The society gets the kind of medicine that it deserves.