The Healer: to a Young Physician, with Doré's Picture of Christ healing the Sick

Professional Courtesy

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.65.4.751 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 65 (4) ◽

pp. 751-757

Author(s):

Lee W. Bass ◽

Jerome H. Wolfson

Keyword(s):

Medical Profession ◽

Physician Attitudes ◽

Patient Relationship ◽

Office Visits ◽

Young Physician ◽

Central Concept ◽

Optimal Care ◽

Pediatric Services ◽

Medical Career ◽

Telephone Calls

Professional courtesy is a practice that has outlived its usefulness. Today it stands in the way of a physician and his family getting the best care available. It is an anachronism which in the modern medical milieu defeats the noble purpose it was originally intended to serve. Physician attitudes toward each other and their patients should be an integral part of the ongoing ethical discussion, starting at the beginning of medical school and continuing on throughout one's medical career. The concept and implications of professional courtesy should be included in these discussions because they go to the heart of getting and giving the best care available. Major criticisms against doing away with professional courtesy are that this somehow denigrates the medical profession, removes the aura of medicine, casts a shadow on its nobility, and somehow translates itself into the idea that money is what is good about medical care. We feel the central concept of the doctor-patient relationship (no matter who the patient is) should be a special sense of caring. However, not charging for care makes it different for the patient and the physician. Both may feel compromised. Both may feel the loss of freedom to react. Charging for care says that the patient's needs are significant, deserve attention, and that the doctor's services have value. Pediatrics, perhaps more than any other specialty, requires frequent communication and visits between physician and patient and entails extensive use of the telephone. We feel that because of professional courtesy many physician-parents and their spouses are deterred from using pediatric services appropriately by timely office visits or telephone calls. They therefore do not receive optimal care.35 In starting practice, the young physician must make a decision when he sees his first doctor-patient. Although he may have never been taught about the concept, somewhere in the back of his mind is a thought that Hippocrates said physicians should not charge other physicians for care, and so he establishes a precedent of professional courtesy that usually remains through a lifetime of practice and is very difficult to change or abandon. It is therefore at the start of practice that the disadvantages of professional courtesy should be most carefully considered. We recommend not starting the custom. But even if it has already been started, we recommend that this anachronism be abandoned.

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What has the Young Physician Leaders Programme achieved?

The Lancet ◽

10.1016/s0140-6736(14)61108-9 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 384 (9937) ◽

pp. 26-27 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Michelle L Giles ◽

Fabien B Vincent ◽

Stefan Volkenstein ◽

Sultana Marufa Shefin ◽

Anjana Silva ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Young Physician ◽

Physician Leaders

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Upon the employment of Oxygen mixed with Atmospheric Air in Respiration

Annual Reports of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain ◽

10.1017/s2397930500002411 ◽

1875 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

pp. 72-73

Author(s):

M. A. Gaudin

Keyword(s):

Pure Oxygen ◽

Young Physician ◽

Atmospheric Air ◽

Long Time ◽

Last Stage

Apropos of the very remarkable effects of the respiration of atmospheric air enriched with oxygen confirmed by MM. Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel during their last aérostatic ascent, I remember to have obtained some long time since very analagous results.This was in the year 1832, on the occasion of the great epidemic of cholera. A young physician employed me to administer to the cholera-patients of the ambulance of the Rue Grange-Batelière pure oxygen to assist in producing re-action. We operated upon the sick in the last stage of the malady, and some were saved by the employment of this means.

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Young Physician Explores TV, Print Opportunities

JAMA ◽

10.1001/jama.1987.03400160023006 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 258 (16) ◽

pp. 2177

Author(s):

Marsha F. Goldsmith

Keyword(s):

Young Physician

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I. An extract of a letter from Leghorn to Dr Martin Lister, November 24. 1698. Concerning Seignior Redi's manuscripts, and the generation of fleas.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London ◽

10.1098/rstl.1699.0004 ◽

1699 ◽

Vol 21 (249) ◽

pp. 42-43 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Young Physician ◽

Left Behind

For any thing that Redi hath left behind him in manuscript, although I have enquir'd of a young physician his domestick, yet nothing appears: and that second part of <italic>animali dentro gli animali</italic> we are like to be without.

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