Educating is the most dignified of human manifestations towards their peers. Teaching, which is an integral part of education, is, in our area, a noble attitude already emphasized by Hippocrates in our oath.
“I will honor the teacher who teaches me this art as I honor my own parents”.
We have always respected these principles, and this is the main activity of the Brazilian Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology (Sbot), of which the Brazilian Journal of Orthopedics (RBO) is one part.
We need to make our education systems quicker in order to be more responsive to current trends; for young people, our classes sometimes seem to be the reading of newspapers of the previous day.
For us, teaching and educating colleagues is a voluntary, unpaid activity, done to the respect for our profession, as Hippocrates wrote.
Continuing medical education has also been considered a good business. Most manufacturers or distributors of surgical materials have heavily invested in this area because they found that this is the best and most dignified way of getting related to the physicians.
They sponsor our congresses, internships in specialized hospitals abroad, and now even with specific training centers where they offer material and cadavers for training. Obviously, it is up to us to keep the ethical standard of this relationship, because the ethical part of medicine comes from the physician. The merchant's ethics rests with the merchant.
I believe that, as far as we, orthopedists, are concerned, there is a huge and fruitful effort in teaching and education.
Regarding our clients, this does not occur, and what we see is a great gap in this area of our relationship with the patients, either in the personal or institutional plane.
With an inaccessible language and a rigid posture, we put ourselves in a position that is far from our customers.
This attitude has generated, over the years, a clear antipathy for the medical class, who is blamed for most of the flaws of a system in which we have no participation.
The blaming for the physician for something that has nothing to do with his/her professional performance is clear in any news that carries some fact involving health. If there is a delay or lack of assistance equipment, it is never our fault.
Socially, we are seen as distant, and are generally considered mercenaries, for developing a job that, due to the degree of responsibility, is priceless. In addition, we observed, in our outpatient clinics, patients who were lost or who took harmful actions for the evolution of their treatments. They stepped without being able to step, they did not move when they should move, they moved where they should not, they did not take medication correctly, they did not return when they should return and so many other errors due to lack of education.
This distance greatly favors the emergence of charlatans who, with their kindness, attention and clarity in communication, harm people with their dishonest activity.
We are good at educating, as we have seen at the beginning of this text, but it is necessary that we develop channels of communication with everything around us with the same ability with which we educate.
This attitude is fundamental to improve our relationship with the clients, be it institutional or private, and with the institutions surrounding us, such as the government and the press.
The seemingly ethical distance, the silence at times that affect us are not positive attitudes.
News about our practice that is left unanswered and becomes truth is frequent. The relationship between us and health insurance companies, which matters a lot to the customer, is not clear to our clients. Our client does not know, for example, that most of the time the increase in his plan cost does not mean a change in the amounts paid for the medical service.
The proximity to our customers in the personal plane can only be beneficial. Educating them personally, or in groups, will bring greater credibility and proximity, and avoids aggressive attitudes such as lawsuits that most often occur due to a relationship and information error.
As we use it in our training, educating must be a personal and institutional attitude.
I am sure that if we are willing to educate our clients, and if Sbot devotes part of its concerns to educating and informing the population in our area, we will have a better and more respected position in society.
Available online 3 September 2017
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Sep-Oct 2017
