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My
philosophy about health and medicine:
An
old Latin proverb says: "medicus curat, natura sanat" which
means ‘the doctor cares [for his patient], nature heals
[him]’.
 As a
doctor I have given the Hippocratic oath. Which in essence is a promise
to do no harm.
The
reason why do no harm is the cornerstone of Hippocratic oath is that as
doctors we have great influence over people's health. Unfortunately our
ability to harm is much greater than to heal. When a person is ill, as
humans, our innate desire is to do something to make them feel better.
This is especially the case when this person is our child. The
discomfort that we see is not the illness itself but rather the
symptoms or the way our body responds to the illness. Naturally we tend
to try to alleviate these symptoms because we perceive them to be the
illness itself. This is when as doctors we have to be very careful. We
understand illness differently than the layperson and have to direct
our efforts to educating and providing only the treatment that is
necessary.
I
spend much more time explaining to people why I am not prescribing a
medication than actually prescribing one. And this does take more time
than just handing over a prescription. More often than not, just
waiting and observing the symptoms is better than taking a medication
that will obscure the symptoms. Although this method may be more time
consuming, it is just one of the ways that I fulfill my oath as a
physician and I will not spare any efforts to help parents bring up
physically and emotionally healthy children.
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