Bullying the Doc Is Becoming a Pastime
When my wife and I took our 9-month-old baby for her most recent pediatrician’s visit, we were nervously aware that a confrontation was a possibility. Our daughter is mentally precocious, earns rave reviews from fellow supermarket shoppers for her copper curls and fawn eyes, is boisterously active and is in every way a healthy tyke. She’s also small--5% underweight, to be exact. And that day we were ready to rumble about it.
Our pediatrician assured us that there was nothing to worry about for now, but to start bolstering her diet with more dairy and meat fats. We looked at him, wondering: Is that all? I asked if there was anything else we could do; I tried to project a tone of mild concern, but I think it came off like Gen. Ulysses S. Grant demanding Vicksburg, Miss., to surrender unconditionally.
He released a world-weary smile. He’d been down this road before.
For us it was the moment of decision every parent faces at one time or another. To bully or not to bully the doctor?
It is the new great American pastime. We live in a culture suffused with medical promissory notes for instant gratification. Advertisements filled with perky, healthy people recovered from hives, impotence and depression dominate television and magazines. We read about new treatments and cures every day. The expected outcome of any trip to the doctor is a pill or shot to solve our problems.
Unfortunately, that translates to less than sound relationships between health-care providers and impatient patients, especially parents. A disastrous case in point is ear infections. We haven’t suffered the trauma of the shrieking child in pain from an ear infection, but we know parents who have, and they often boast of convincing--read “bullying”--the doctor to give the child antibiotics. The problem is that most research indicates that kids often actually have fluid in the ear, which is not an infection, and those that do have an infection often recover on their own. Worse, profligate use of antibiotics spawns drug-resistant bacteria. The same goes for the flu: Extra fluids and bed rest are still the best cures.
That doesn’t stop parents from pressuring doctors to “do something.”
A pediatrician friend put it this way: “Parents want to get everything fixed now, fast. They don’t want to hear that it takes days or weeks for a child to recover. And they certainly don’t want to hear that symptoms are often the body’s natural road to recovery. So do we argue and take up valuable time or just give in and prescribe largely useless medication?”
A contributing factor is the social changes in the family. Once upon a time, sick little ones were a problem, not a work- and lifestyle-threatening meteor. Child-care providers complain of the increasing number of parents dropping off very sick kids, sometimes even insisting the droopy, sneezing, feverish child is just fine.
No one, not even physicians, wants to return to the old days when patients accepted any medical advice without question. Undoubtedly, we ordinary folks are empowered by the proliferation of medical information and easier access to second opinions. The doctor is not always right.
With power, however, comes responsibility. We should ask questions, especially if what doctors do for us and our kids does not seem to work. But we also need to become better informed so that our challenges arise from wisdom, not from perceived inconvenience. Are we demanding a drug because it has been known to work, or because we want immediate action? Our duty as parents and patients is to research and think before we confront and demand.
This was our choice at the pediatrician’s office. We could have escalated the situation, but we subsided, or rather we listened to what the doctor was saying. Our daughter has a metabolism somewhere between a hummingbird and the Energizer Bunny, is a light sleeper and a finicky feeder; she needs more calories, and he was giving us a sensible plan to provide them. Every other sign and measurement, including height and head size, pointed to perfect health. He was plainly right, and our reading on the subject backed him up. We took notes, thanked him, and went home to begin our new regimen.
There are times when doctors need to be prodded and poked, but we should do so only when we have the knowledge to back up our bullying.
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David D. Perlmutter is senior associate for research at the Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs at Louisiana State University. He is the author of “Visions of War” (St. Martin’s Press, 1999) and “Policing the Media” (Sage, 2000).
