I really enjoyed watching “The Doctor”, I felt like the movie correctly depicted both the clinician centered and patient centered approaches. In the beginning of the movie Dr. McKee was mainly clinician centered regarding his encounters with all of his patients. The very first scene that displayed this in my opinion was when he was leaving the surgical room and Dr. Bloomfield asked for his opinion regarding one of his patients. Dr. McKee gave his input on the matter, but he also made light of the patient’s symptoms by making unnecessary jokes. Dr. McKee also mocked Dr. Bloomfield amongst his fellow doctors implying that his attempt to create a patient centered by talking the patient through everything, was simply him talking too much. This first scene showed that Dr. McKee had little interest in any kind of patient centered method and instead looked down on it when he saw others using this method.

     One scene that stood out to me as especially clinician centered on Dr. McKee’s part was when he was tending to a patient who was coming in for staple removal and had a question about scarring. The patient expressed her and her husband’s concerns about there being a big scar and instead of consoling the patient and attempting to make her feel better Dr. McKee simply mad a joke about the situation. This was very insensitive of him and it could be seen through the patient’s body language that this matter was serious for her and she was hurt by his lack of seriousness regarding the situation. In the beginning of the movie it seemed as if Dr. McKee along with everyone he surrounded himself with took patients as a joke or as a nuisance. One example of this is when he and his wife were in the car and a patient called him with a serious question. Instead of listening to the question and appealing to the needs of the patient and the patient’s wife he simply laughed and made a joke about it with his wife.

     These situations along with his body language and comments regarding the patients showed that Dr. McKee cared little about treating the actual patient and solely on treating the disease. He even made a comment that basically paralleled this mindset when he was speaking to his interns and said “a surgeon’s job is to go in cut fix the problem then get out”. This mindset shows no care or concern for the patient’s needs or wants only for treating the disease. This was also shown through his interactions with his patients he never had a real conversation with any of them and only asked closed ended yes or no question making it seem like he had no time to listen to their actual story. Dr. McKee would soon realize that this would come back around full circle when he was diagnosed with cancer.

     As soon as the story shifted and Dr. McKee became the patient he began to realize what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that clinician centered encounter. During his first encounter with the ENT surgeon he seemed uncomfortable because after finding out the reason for his visit she starts doing things to his body such as numbing him and looking in his throat without even telling him what she is doing and talking him through it. Then once she is finished with her examination she abruptly tells him that he has a growth and she wants to do a biopsy without any further context or explanation. She makes no attempt to console him or make him feel involved in the visit or treatment because she is solely focused on the growth and treating it, without any regards for how he might feel just finding out this life changing information. This insensitivity does not allow the patient to feel included or as if they have a say or control over their own life. Dr. McKee continued to feel like this especially during his preparation for biopsy. During this part of the film no one communicated to him what was going on they simply gave commands. Even when he was being wheeled the person moving him would not acknowledge him when he tried to have conversation. Dr. McKee then went on to give some input on a situation he overheard two doctors speaking about as he was being wheeled and after that he stated “yes it speaks”. This shows that Dr. McKee felt as if no one acknowledged him as a person and only viewed him for his situation. This forced Dr. McKee to see the flaws within himself which made him begin to switch more to a patient centered approach within his own patients.

     The first scene that stood out to me as Dr. McKee changing to a patient centered perspective was when he had an encounter with one of his interns in the hallway. In this scene the intern addresses the patient by their room number and references to them as terminal. This does not sit well with Dr. McKee and gets him upset so he corrects his intern by telling him that the patients have names and he needs to address them as so. He also tells the intern that if he refers to another patient as terminal that he can use that same word to describe his internship at the hospital. This scene showed that Dr. McKee began to see the patients as more than just another complaint and began to see them as people because he knew that he wanted to be treated in that manner regarding his cancer treatment. This realization within his own patients leads Dr. McKee to make a shift in direction regarding his own treatment.

     Dr. McKee decides to fire his ENT surgeon because she was spending too much time focused on the disease and not enough on him as a patient. She never informed him of anything she was doing or had planned, she also shut him down when he tried to give input on what time he wanted his own surgery. She was not focused on making him comfortable or catering to his needs she was simply concerned with getting his tumor out then sending him on his way. Dr. McKee could not take this anymore and wanted a patient centered clinician so he went to Dr. Bloomfield because he had seen first-hand how he cared for each and every one of his patients. Despite all the times Dr. McKee ridiculed him Dr. Bloomfield was still nice and agreed to do the surgery even on his day off. During the surgery Dr. Bloomfield made it a point to make the encounter patient centered by talking Dr. McKee through everything he was doing and creating a safe comfortable environment by doing things such as playing his favorite song and having his favorite nurse sing to him as he went under. Dr. Bloomfield also included Dr. McKee’s wife informing her on how the surgery went and asking if she needed anything to be more comfortable. After his treatment Dr. McKee fully adopted the idea of creating a patient centered environment. This is shown through his encounter with his heart transplant patient, in this scene he does everything in his power to comfort the patient and his wife before the surgery by asking open ended questions and making sure they are both at ease. After the successful transplant he even rubs the head of the unconscious patient and talks to him telling him everything is going to be alright now and how his wife will be happy. This not only adjusted how Dr. McKee interacted with patients but also changed how he taught his interns.

     In the last scene Dr. McKee has his interns act as patients in order to get a sense of what it is like on the other side of the spectrum. He goes on to explain to them that they have spent years learning the concrete knowledge now it is time to learn the personal aspect of the doctor patient interaction. I believe that his intention was that his interns learned that the patients have a lot on their plate sometimes more than the doctor itself. He wanted them to see first-hand the physical, emotional, and mental toll that patients go through on a daily basis. In hopes that experiencing this first hand his interns will learn to sympathize with patients and treat them as human beings and not just as problems that need to be fixed. He realized from his own personal experience that the only way to see this was to become the patient. This exercise will in return allow his interns to build a patient centered environment by doing things such as asking open ended questions, informing them on everything that is happening, and by simply talking to them on a personal an emotional level. Dr. McKee realized this is what it meant to be a doctor and how it is crucial to not only treat the disease but most importantly to treat the patient.

     I personally learned a lot from this movie with in regards to what it really means to be patient centered and why it is so crucial with in the healthcare field. Being patient centered is not only about what goes inside an exam room it also relates to all aspects of life. One cannot call themselves patient centered then go and talk bad about a patient to his/her colleges behind the patient’s back. Instead a clinician must be genuine and must always carry that sense of sympathy and empathy with in regards to their patients. I also learned that open ended question really makes a difference in a visit for a patient because it shows that you are willing and want to hear their story. Watching this I also realized that sometimes it can be easy to get caught up in just doing things to a patient without communicating to them what it is your doing and why you are doing it. However, in order to make an unequivocal patient centered encounter a clinician must get the patient involved by communicating with them, hearing their story, listening to all of their concerns. Dr. McKee and this movie has taught me that these crucial little things that can easily be over looked go a long way in treating not only the disease but treating the patient which is the whole purpose of being a member of the health care field.