Dr. Pauline W. Chen from The New York Times says being a doctor involves knowing the clinical facts like the back of your hand, but it also involves being aware of a patient’s economic reality. She recalls a time when she told one of her patients that he was to pack gauze into his open abdominal incision every day in order to keep it clean and healthy, and then come back in a few weeks for a check-up. However, when the patient arrived for his visit, Dr. Chen noticed the patient had not been changing the gauze as ordered, and his wound was no longer healthy and clean. When Dr. Chen began to stress to him the importance of changing the dressing, he pointed to a stack of unopened gauze, and said, “Hey, Doc … Do you think I could have the extra? This stuff isn’t cheap.” She says she filled the patient’s pockets with gauze, and then began to realize the importance of embracing the social and economic aspects of health care. She says, “It [is] possible to learn about the economic and social aspects of health care while immersed in the details of biology, physiology and pharmacology. And it [is] impossible to become a good clinician without doing so.”
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