More on the Patient-Clinician Partnership

Lyme patients aren't the only ones being given short shrift in medicine. They also aren't the only ones reaching out for medical advice on the Internet. Dave deBronkart found out about an experimental treatment for his cancer by speaking to other patients online, and he talks about it on Ted.com . Yes, the treatment was successful.

In The Widening Circle, Lyme pioneer Polly Murray wrote,

The preponderance of support groups and of patients acting individually as their own advocates is symptomatic of a health care profession that has become so stressed and fractured that the opportunity for a successful doctor-patient relationship has been compromised.

She goes on to quote Dr. Howard M. Spiro:

The more medical science advances, the more the art of medicine seems to decline...

And finally, she cites Dr. Richard J. Baron:

We must learn to hear our patients as well as their breath sounds; after all, what are we listening for?

When the diagnosis is bleak, and when perhaps there are more cutting-edge treatments out there than one's local doctor or hospital knows, reaching out to that great Internet "cloud" can reap rewards, if only to lend an ear of sympathy. If clinicians aren't providing that service anymore, then they should not be surprised that patients will look elsewhere to find it.


Murray, P. (1996). The Widening Circle: A Lyme disease Pioneer Tells Her Story. NY: St. Martin's Press, p. 289.

Spiro, H.M. (1986). Doctors, Patients, and Placebos. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 28.

Baron, R.J. (1985). An Introduction to Medical Phenomenology: I Can't Hear You When I'm Listening, Annals of Internal Medicine 103, p. 609.