DOCTOR SHOULD TELL THE TRUTH TO THEIR PATIENT

Doctor should tell the truth to their patient

Doctor should tell the truth to their patient

Doctor-patient communications are also analyzed as belonging to a transnational field, as a site for the flows of knowledge, technologies, and practice forms through which local and global elements enter into conversation and conflict. How then do these issues translate cross-nationally? How do doctor-patient communications mediate local and global flows of knowledge and biotechnologies in low-income societies? How is the essence of doctoring threatened in societies that combine overwhelming disease problems with scarcity of resources? The study of clinical narratives provides a means for cross-national comparisons and analysis of high-technology medicine, as well as research on the influence of economic scarcity and disease patterns on the ways doctors and patients relate and communicate in poor societies.

The likelihood of developing a good patient-doctor relationship will remain weak if the patient is passive or uninvolved. Research has shown that very few patients fully understand what their doctors have told them and that roughly half of patients leave their doctors' offices uncertain of what they are to do specifically about their health. Patients need to develop the skills to question their doctors, communicate openly and honestly about their health and well-being, and participate in the selection of treatment options presented to them.

A good patient-doctor relationship becomes crucial for the elderly because they have more contacts with doctors than do younger adults (a mean of 10 encounters per year among those 65 to 74 years of age and a mean of 15 encounters per year among those age 85 years and older). In 2003, people age 65 years and older accounted for 12% of the total U.S. population, and this age group is projected to represent nearly 20% of the total U.S. population by ...