Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Who would you rather have as a doctor?

I've started following the health blog KevinMD on Twitter. The blog is written by Dr. Kevin Pho, an internist in New Hampshire looking to pull back the curtain on medicine.

One of the entries that caught my attention was an entry from yesterday about a survey reported in Medical Economics last month that found that the most popular television doctor is the snarky Dr. Gregory House from Fox's show House. In the same survey, the majority of people also said the most important characteristic in a doctor is bedside manner/communication skills, something Dr. House is lacking.

So what do you think? Is this just a weird quirk - that we like fictional doctors who say smart alecky things and cure medical mysteries all within 60 minutes, but we expect our own doctors to be excellent and empathic communicators? Do we say we value communication skills, when what we really want is the best technically skilled doctor? Or is it just entertainment?

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