Incautious Doctors
Throughout the medical history, preventing or curing a disease was one of the hardest dilemmas that doctors face. According to Nuland’s novel, The Doctor’s Plague, where a group of obstetrical doctors came together at Vienna’s general hospital, Allgemeine Krankenhaus, in order to figure out the leading causes of childbed fever epidemic (Nuland). It took them years and decades to find out the roots of the disease. They conducted several theories and experiments to come up a solution, and most of them did not succeed. Semmelweis was one of the young obstetricians who joined the hospital as an assistant. During his assistantship at the hospital, he began to implement his own theories. Even though he had a slightly different approach than other doctors, his theory did not work well either. However, the doctors, including Semmelweis, failed to cease the puerperal infection due to misunderstanding …show more content…
For instance, Gawande said in his book, Better, “I don’t don gloves for non-genital exams, either” (Gawande 81). This quote shows that how careless the doctors can be sometimes due to their personal egoism in order to justify their reckless mistakes. Gawande is making the situation less effective in explaining his pathetic actions in a way that seems there would not be a negative consequence of his action. Earlier in the book, he talked about how he was trying to emulate his father’s strategy of handling his patients, but he decided not wear the gloves even though his father did. He made that decision without a reasonable argument. He was unwilling to wear the gloves because he might want to be unique and different than his father, but not wearing gloves while examining a patient is not acceptable in the medical perspective. The doctors need to go outside their confront zones and personal desires in order to stay away from making regrettable
Throughout the medical history, preventing or curing a disease was one of the hardest dilemmas that doctors face. According to Nuland’s novel, The Doctor’s Plague, where a group of obstetrical doctors came together at Vienna’s general hospital, Allgemeine Krankenhaus, in order to figure out the leading causes of childbed fever epidemic (Nuland). It took them years and decades to find out the roots of the disease. They conducted several theories and experiments to come up a solution, and most of them did not succeed. Semmelweis was one of the young obstetricians who joined the hospital as an assistant. During his assistantship at the hospital, he began to implement his own theories. Even though he had a slightly different approach than other doctors, his theory did not work well either. However, the doctors, including Semmelweis, failed to cease the puerperal infection due to misunderstanding …show more content…
For instance, Gawande said in his book, Better, “I don’t don gloves for non-genital exams, either” (Gawande 81). This quote shows that how careless the doctors can be sometimes due to their personal egoism in order to justify their reckless mistakes. Gawande is making the situation less effective in explaining his pathetic actions in a way that seems there would not be a negative consequence of his action. Earlier in the book, he talked about how he was trying to emulate his father’s strategy of handling his patients, but he decided not wear the gloves even though his father did. He made that decision without a reasonable argument. He was unwilling to wear the gloves because he might want to be unique and different than his father, but not wearing gloves while examining a patient is not acceptable in the medical perspective. The doctors need to go outside their confront zones and personal desires in order to stay away from making regrettable