When you first decided to become a doctor, you likely envisioned yourself caring for ill or injured patients. While that is part of a doctor’s responsibilities, patient care doesn’t necessarily end once they leave your office. As a medical student, you’re taught to find the root cause of your patients’ illnesses and conditions.
Some illnesses are passed from parent to child, but others are the result of environmental and even socioeconomic factors. As a physician, you’ll be in the unique position to understand the impacts such health inequity can have on public health, as well as to advocate for changes to minimize, or even prevent, future impacts.
What Role Does a Doctor Play in Society?
As a doctor, you can fulfill many roles in society, including medical professional, patient advocate, and public health advocate.
Patient Rights Advocate
Before you can treat a patient, they must have access to health care. Language barriers, transportation, finances, and even discomfort asking questions can keep a patient from receiving the care they need. As a doctor, you can help them find resources to overcome these obstacles.
For example, if your patient feels more comfortable discussing their medical care in their native tongue, you can contact an interpreter at your medical facility. If your patient comes from a low-income background and is struggling to afford their medication, you can offer a generic option that offers the same effects as the name brand.
You can also teach patients what they can do to advocate for themselves, including:
- Tracking their symptoms
- Going to appointments with a friend, relative, or patient advocate
- Asking for clarification if they don’t understand what the medical staff is saying
- Preparing questions to ask before their visit
- Saying no if they’re uncomfortable with things proposed during their visit
You can help patients gain confidence when speaking to physicians, to ensure they’re giving themselves the best chance at receiving appropriate care. You can help them stand up for their health and well-being.
Public Health and Preventive Medicine Advocate
In 1848, Rudolf Virchow realized typhus had such a devastating effect on the Upper Silesia region of Europe because of living conditions and the government’s inaction. He fought for reforms that improved social conditions for citizens and public health at large. He believed that medicine is a social science and that physicians should strive to improve the health of the poorest in the nation.
In order to do this, it’s important to educate patients on their conditions and how they can help prevent them from worsening, and to fight for reforms on a larger scale.
Doctor of Medicine (MD) programs train you to diagnose, treat, and identify the root causes of a wide range of illnesses, injuries, and conditions. You can develop treatment plans tailored to each patient’s unique needs and educate them on their condition to help them return to a sense of normalcy. Even though you’ll treat some patients after they've become ill or injured, you'll likely incorporate some degree of preventive medicine into your practice.
This can help bring awareness to high-risk or unhealthy behaviors that may increase a patient’s chances of developing chronic conditions later in life. Educating patients and their families on the difference that small changes in their daily routines can make on their health and wellness will eventually snowball and impact the community at large.
Supporter for Health Equity
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “health and health equity are determined by the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, play, and age, as well as biological determinants.” Discrimination, stereotyping, and prejudice can worsen people’s living conditions. Additionally, discriminatory practices still linger in health care systems and processes, which can lead to underrepresented groups not receiving adequate care.
For example, the maternal morbidity rate of black women in the United States is much higher than for women of other races and ethnicities. According to a 2023 article in the journal Healthcare, this is likely a result of social and systematic factors like implicit bias and racism within the current health care system, limited access to health care, marginalization, and more.
Fighting for health equity can take many forms, including:
- Joining Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded projects
- Advocating for affordable health care services in low-income neighborhoods
- Organizing an activist group to advocate for a cause important to you
- Creating new social reforms or expanding existing ones with policymakers and/or public health organizations
- Working with community outreach programs
Building Trust by Maintaining Professionalism in Medicine
As a physician, you’ll likely encounter patients who are skeptical of health care providers and the system as a whole. If your patient doesn’t trust you, they’re less likely to engage during appointments, which can prevent them from receiving appropriate care. While building a rapport may seem difficult at first, it’s a crucial part of improving patient outcomes, as well as the health of your community.
Being compassionate and a clear communicator while maintaining professionalism is a great way to begin the process. Answering your patient’s questions concisely, explaining procedures or treatments, and guiding them through each step of their appointment can help put your patient at ease.
Regularly asking if they’re okay before and even during procedures can also be incredibly beneficial if your patient is hesitant to speak up. While you’re there to help them, it’s important to make sure they feel safe and heard during their appointment.
And while it may be tempting to treat a loved one, it isn’t the best idea. Your emotions are more likely to cloud your judgment, which could cause you to make irreversible mistakes. As a doctor, your primary goal is to act in the patient’s best interest regardless of your relationship with them.
Other potential conflicts of interests include:
- Receiving gifts from a patient or loved one
- Receiving kickbacks that can influence your judgment
- Sharing patient information with your employer or for marketing or advertising purposes
Your ethical obligation of upholding your station with integrity is as important as your commitment to do no harm.
During your time as a doctor, you’ll likely wear many hats. Whether you’re advocating on your patient’s behalf, restoring their faith in the health care system, or fighting for change, you’ll spend each day striving to improve the health of others.
Ready to start your journey? Complete your application today or submit this form to request more information.
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