Patient Blaming is Bad Medicine.
Dr. Zed Zha's Newsletter: February 2024
Patient blaming is bad medicine.
A few weeks ago, I had a patient who insisted on blaming himself for his plaque psoriasis. "I screwed up." He kept repeating. At first, I was perplexed by this self-blaming patient and frustrated by his insistence. Soon, I discovered the two main reasons he held onto a false belief: 1) He needed a simple explanation to help him rationalize a chronic, incurable condition; and 2) He had been blamed by multiple doctors numerous times for his rash, he had started to believe it himself.
More than half of patients feel shamed or blamed by their physicians. Being blamed by anyone can trigger significant psychological stress. Now imagine the blamer is your doctor, in front of whom you are totally powerless and vulnerable, and whom you trusted to help you feel better. Not surprisingly, one in five patients leaves their doctors for this reason.
Other than being unethical, unhelpful, and untrue, patient blaming is also lazy medicine. It's a simple explanation the clinician anchors onto without exploring other possibilities. And if the solution is “just don’t get yourself sick,” then the responsibility of improving health outcomes falls on the patient instead of the physician-patient team. And when patients don’t get better, the prescription is “try harder this time.” Rinse, then repeat. This insidious form of recycling false information gaslights the patient into self-blaming.
Doctors don't consciously (for the most part) blame the patient. The patient-blaming culture in medicine is really to blame for this harmful phenomenon. This culture is deep-rooted in the history of medicine and passed down to generations of practitioners.
But some of us refuse to follow suit. So, rule number one for my team: Whatever we do, we do NOT blame patients for what they have.”
Read the whole post on Zed's blog.
It's Black History/Love Month!
In honor of Bla
ck History Month, Zed's most recent Op-Ed on MedPage Today brings attention to medical racism and its harm done to the Black community. The recent news about false positive drug testing by police resulting in tens of thousands of Americans being wrongfully jailed reveals another hidden truth: Black Americans are disproportionally affected by this injustice. Drug tests are common in medicine, and this racial bias is just as rampant.
Zed's "Where is Home?" story is on a Podcast!
This heart-warming story about finding home in the most unexpected place is about love, belonging, and closure. It started as a viral tweet, and then became a blog post. Thanks to Dr. Christina Gessler from The Academic Life Podcast, now you can listen to this story wherever you get your podcasts.
When I, a girl from Beijing arrived in Nowhere, New Hampshire, I was lost and depressed. My landlords didn't just rent me a place, they fed me when I couldn’t bring myself to cook, and washed my clothes when all I did was stay in bed. This little place on the river became a dream, in which I could rest and heal.
10 years later, I came back to Nowhere. When I arrived, I saw that everything stayed the same. The only difference is that now I have more space in my heart for those who love me. And I’m determined to make that space a cozy home for them like they once did for me.
“Where is home?” Sometimes people ask me.
I am home.
Finally, Happy Chinese New Year! In this Year of the Dragon, I wish you good luck, good times, and good people! Here is a collage of our New Year celebration meals. You can see more of what they are on my Instagram here (if you are hungry)!
And this is for the Moshi Moshi fans out there! If you like our content, please send this newsletter around!