The difficulties of being a physician

There are good proverbs in Turkish, such as “Half the world knows not how the other half lives,” or “Only those who have fallen from the roof understand those who fall from the roof.” Physicians should primarily fulfill their duties when they see their patients suffering: diagnosis, treatment and prevention. This is valid for all patients: emergency patients, outpatients, inpatients or the patients in their office. Physicians cannot properly solve patients’ and their relatives’ problems if they feel and prioritize patients’ suffering and let it direct them. Patients feel safer, but physicians stray from duty discipline if they surrender to this sense of suffering. It is a must to understand and respect the patients’ and their relatives’ suffering in duty discipline. Nevertheless, physicians should not push the priority of diagnosis and treatment, in which patient relatives not always participate, into the background.