Doctors as Priests, Providers and Protectors - Part 4

In Priests, Providers, and Protectors: The Three Faces of  the Physician, Ron Pies proposes a third way to view physicians, not exalting them to the grandiose position of Priest nor demoting them to mere Provider. In the role I call the Protector, the physician's chief obligation is that of  the safeguarding of the patient's physical, emotional, and spiritual well being.

This is a role that acknowledges the patient's autonomy, while recognizing the physician's expertise and the ethical imperative to use that expertise to express foundational principles of the medical field: beneficence, nonmaleficense, and justice. Do good, don't do harm, and I'm not sure what he means by justice, though I have some ideas. The examples below are mine, not his.

Doctors as Priests -- The Look

Several years ago I took Prozac for what was then thought to be Major Depression.  The hypomanic episode it precipitated gave me a book.  But before that, it gave me the runs.  Since my first doctor thought the runs would go away on their own, but I was about to leave for Costa Rica and wanted them to go away faster, I sought a second opinion.  The new patient form asked for my full history, and I told the truth about my depression, as well as the runs.

What follows is an excerpt from Prozac Monologues, the book to be published next year.  It describes that appointment.  I offer it as an example of a doctor functioning as priest.  [See last week's commentary on Ron Pies' article, Priests, Providers, and Protectors: The Three Faces of the Physician.]  Not the Father kind of priest, but the more ancient healer/witch/shaman kind.  It's tricky to handle the power of the priesthood.  But I want doctors to manage that power responsibly, not give it up on account of its ambiguity.  It is the power of relationship.  We need doctors to use every power at their disposal to heal.  Priesthood is one of those powers.

The Look

...When the doctor looked at the piece of paper with all those words circled on it, she didn't smile at my weak attempt at humor.  Oh well.  What she was most concerned about for my trip to Costa Rica was how I would manage my depression as the Prozac was leaving my system -- which I could tell it was, because the dark suffocating cloud was coming back.