Introduction 7
Though many people quip that doctors make the worst patients , these physicians can offer vital lessons , based on their multiple personal , professional , medical , and existential transformations . Forced not only to doff their white coats , but now to strip bare in examining rooms , they faced disease and the threat of death , confronting and reevaluating their views and understandings of themselves , their roles , and their interactions with patients and colleagues . Hierarchies now turned upside down .
Ordinarily , human beings have just one main point of view , but these doctor-patients had two , and elucidated how these can be held , each at times shaping , or combining with , the other . These doctors had privileged and uncommon knowledge of ‘‘ the Other .’’ Narratives , along with novels and films , can convey to us another person ’ s point of view . Many of these doctors shuttled back and forth between these dual roles , as if between two parts of the brain ; and over time , each position affected the other .
In their shuttling , these doctors illuminated the refractions between their dual roles of physician and patient — the width , depth , subdivisions , and substance of the chasm between these two poles . From Ovid to Dostoyevsky , such doublings have drawn artists and writers . The inner conflicts of the doctors here do not match the fictionalized extremes of Dr . Jekyll and Mr . Hyde ( though it is interesting to note that to depict such radical discontinuity , Robert Louis Stevenson chose a physician ). Nonetheless , these individuals balanced or reconciled dual aspects of their identities . All ended up somewhere different from where they began . Managed care , evidence-based medicine , consumerism , and demands for more ‘‘ caring ’’ providers pressured and embattled these doctors both personally and professionally .
They often came to see how , in their efforts to fight disease in others , and now themselves , professional institutions can help but also hinder . Institutions and colleagues pushed them to occupy just one role — as doctor or patient — not a combination of both . Through all of these processes , ill physicians became more sensitive to both sets of perspectives in unparalleled ways .
Ill Physicians Helping Patients and Others
The lessons these doctors gained can help patients and families , current and future physicians , other health care professionals , and medical administrators and policymakers . Confrontation with their own mortality