How Physician Authors Are Changing The Perception Of Healthcare

Health News
Written by Arnab Dey
June 23, 2023

Whether it’s therapy or exploration, writing is an effective way for physicians to make sense of their world. Doctors spend many of their lives listening to stories, observing struggle and hardship, and witnessing acts of heroism.

It’s only natural that they would want to spread these stories.

Contents

Educating the Public

As patient-centered care becomes the norm, patients are more active in healthcare decisions. Physicians must educate their patients about the importance of their choices and explain how medical research informs those decisions.

Historically, clinical teaching and journal clubs have been key methods of training learners to appraise medical research critically. However, these traditional educational activities need help to keep pace with new trends in medical education.

Physician-writers like Dr. Jason Campbell can be at the forefront of educating their patients, colleagues, and the public. Whether they write about the human side of death and dying or the impact of a medical procedure, physicians’ unique life experiences are valuable sources of information and insight. Moreover, their writing can reach a wide audience and may even be influential in changing the world of healthcare.

Changing the Perception of Healthcare

Physician authors often write about patient cases to enlighten medical colleagues, but they also write for broader audiences–blogs, pop science books, and memoirs. These narratives can encourage reflection on physicians’ relationships with their patients, raise awareness about the patient’s experience of illness, and serve as a prism for exploring our shared humanity.

Physicians are uniquely positioned to capture the complexity of healthcare. They are exposed to a rich pipeline of poignant images, unforgettable language, and colorful characters on any given day of office notes, consultations, histories & physicals. Their education, training, and clinical experience equip them to approach healthcare issues from an intellectual perspective and with deep empathy.

They can describe the impact of healthcare changes on individuals and society. However, not all physicians are cut out for the role of writer. Many choose to work with ghostwriters to achieve their publishing goals. This can be particularly true in highly specialized fields such as medicine.

Changing the Perception of Doctors

Physician authors can create a lasting legacy that can shape the healthcare industry and its perception for generations. These physician-authors have taken their life experiences and passion for writing to share with the world, creating a niche in the literary marketplace.

A doctor’s career isn’t a straight path—it’s often filled with bumps and bifurcations. These unforeseen changes can lead to the perfect place for a physician to find their calling as an author.

For example, plastic surgeons found a place in writing narrative medicine—a genre that blends memoirs with prescriptive passages. It is perfectly suited for this genre because of my experience as a patient— who contracted hepatitis C from an accidental needlestick while working as a nurse. The experience helped her develop a more compassionate approach to patient care. This empathetic perspective has been instrumental in improving patients’ outcomes and satisfaction with their treatment. It has also influenced the way other physicians practice medicine.

Changing the Perception of Hospitals

Despite the enormous challenges in health care, they still hold high confidence in doctors and nurses. But there is a nagging sense of dissatisfaction with the industry.

A reshaping of healthcare is underway. It is being driven by a growing recognition that access to low-value care has been the real goal. Today’s narrow goals of improving access, containing costs, and boosting profits are misaligned with the interests of patients.

Changing clinical practice is difficult, as illustrated by the long time lag between evidence and its use in training and by the extensive use of low-value care. Existing behavior change models focus on barriers to learning new knowledge and rarely consider the equally challenging task of unlearning outmoded practices.

This study aims to understand the experience of physician unlearning, which we have termed de-implementation, to help guide more successful strategies for changing course. The study utilizes a qualitative design and a grounded theory approach to data collection and analysis.

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