Doctors and Their Relationships with Patients (Joel Merenstein)

Over the years I have written this blog, I have posted comparisons of medical clinicians and public school teachers and the substantial differences between the two helping professions (i.e., doctors work one-on-one with patients while teachers work with groups of children; doctors’ decisions can have life and death consequences, much less so for teachers; differences in salaries; differing social statuses, etc.). These differences seemingly made comparisons far-fetched. But these differences, important as they are, fail to capture the centrality of the relationship between teacher and student and the doctor and patient as similar for both helping professions. It is that core relationship that connects what one learns in school and the maintaining of good health that needs elaborating. In this post, a primary care physician offer examples of such a relationship between doctor and patient that captures the depth, breadth, and importance of that connection to both clinician and patient.…