Mark Brown: A physician’s bias toward helping the suffering

Regarding the May 15 news article “Mother wants answers after son’s overdose”: I can only imagine the depth of despair experienced by Peggy Martin and her family by the loss of a young adult child. Unless we have lived through that, it’s hard to know how each of us would react to such pain.

The profession of medicine tends to attract individuals who have a very strong desire to alleviate suffering in others. It’s not always easy. Success relies on a partnership between the physician and patient.

Because of the high density of very sensitive pain nerve endings in the area of the tonsils, a tonsillectomy is often extremely painful for an extended period of time. The comment that after three days the pain of surgery should be subsiding is factually mistaken. It is very common for it to be 10 days before the pain even begins to get better and typically 14 days before the patient feels relatively OK.

It is not unusual for patients to repeatedly call physicians with pleas for additional help with the pain during the first 10 days, and physicians’ bias toward relieving suffering may make him or her an “easy mark” for an untruthful, clever patient.

This story was originally published May 16, 2016 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Mark Brown: A physician’s bias toward helping the suffering."