A hospital bed is not an Analyst's couch There's a new movement in the field of medicine - one that wants to find an underlying psychological explanation for your symptoms that reveals you are not really sick. I know you probably find this hard to believe, but this touchy-feely medical trend is happening. Dr. John Robinson, professor of medicine and microbiology at Loyola University School of Medicine in Illinois reported in some detail on this alarming trend in an interview for Science Insights. Robinson points to politicians and the media, but I'd be willing to bet that the itch for a change in medical teaching from a science-based approach to a more "holistic" one started with the psychiatrists. Before you stop reading this report, allow me a parenthetical clarification of my thoughts on the matter. It is true, without a doubt, that doctors in general are not as compassionate as they used to be. Our world has changed in the past 50 years to the point that our grandparents would not believe the moral and social rot that has overcome us. But you can't teach compassion; you either have it or you don't. People learn compassion from personal suffering, not from a psychologist or his big brother, the psychiatrist. If doctors abandon the basic science of medicine for the sensitivity approach, it will be a major step backward. The air is full of babble about "communications skills" and such pressing problems as "social, racial, gender, and class justice." What I want to know is what any of these concepts have to do with diagnosing a patient's appendicitis, bronchitis, or even arthritis? People go to see doctors because they're physically sick, not because they need a shoulder to cry out their childhood traumas. If your doctor starts delving into your psyche when you go to see him about a real medical problem, flat out tell him to shut up and listen to what you've got to say. If he takes offense, insist on seeing another physician, preferably one who's been practicing for many years, who will take your symptoms into account and diagnose you based on science, not psychobabble. Raising the bar for sensible medicine,
Dr. William Campbell Douglass II, MD | 
