Are you “battling” heart disease”? Have you “beaten” cancer? Are you “fighting”a chronic illness?

Articolo di Carolyn Thomas su MyHeartSisters.org

These wartime references are metaphors as described by Dr. Jack Coulehan, a physician, an award-winning poet, and editor of the 5th edition of The Medical Interview: Mastering Skills for Clinical Practice, a best-selling textbook on the doctor-patient relationship. Dr. C explains that there are several basic metaphors used in medicine that to a large extent generate the vocabulary of doctor-patient communication – but can also unintentionally objectify and dehumanize the patient.

Here are three of the most prominent metaphors you’re likely to encounter in health care:

Parental (paternalistic) metaphor

Disease is a threat or danger  (“She’s too sick to know the truth”)

Physician is a loving parent/ patient is a child  (“We don’t want him to lose hope”)

Engineering metaphor

Disease is malfunction   (“He’s in for a tune-up”)

Physician is an engineer or technician  (“Something’s wrong, doc – you fix it”)

Patient is a machine  (“We need to ream out your plumbing”)

War metaphor

Disease is the enemy  (“I treat all my patients aggressively”)

Physician is a warrior captain  (“She’s a good fighter”)

Patient is a battleground  (“The war on cancer”)

Dr. Coulehan believes that contemporary medicine has now largely abandoned the parental (or paternalistic) metaphor, perhaps the most prevalent way of thinking about the patient-physician relationship in the good old days.

But try breaking that news to the Emergency Department physician who misdiagnosed me despite my textbook heart attack symptoms in 2008, and – just as alarming! – the ER nurse who returned to my bedside and sternly warned me after the doc had left my cubicle:

“You’ll have to stop questioning the doctor. He is a very good doctor and he does not like to be questioned.” continua a leggere