The Respect of Necessity

The high status of any professional can be called into question, scrutinized and subsequently affirmed or denied as legitimate. Doctors, lawyers and heads of businesses are among those whose contributions to society are constantly being evaluated as worth the cost or unnecessarily expensive. We may be justified in wondering how so many CEO’s got to their positions when we see how many of them prospered with sheer luck and how so many others prospered without so much as a college education. One may state that they are better fit to run Company X than CEO John Doe, and they may be right. It is more difficult, though still possible, to question the inordinate sums of money that lawyers demand. We find many individuals who are willing to act as their own attorneys and are often times successful in their efforts. With businessmen and lawyers aside, we arrive at the MD. Among professionals, it is most difficult to question the legitimacy of a doctor’s knowledge and expertise not because of the initials after their name, but the inability for the common person to find a viable, and less expensive, substitute. It is this lack of alternatives that serves as the basis of our reverence of medical professionals.
Many are aware of the amount of schooling necessary to be a licensed doctor and prescribe medicine and treatment to their paying patrons. Educational integrity aside, the sheer number of years that doctors spend in school grants them a certain level of respect above professionals in other fields. I venture that beyond respect for a doctor’s educational prowess, people come to the hospital when their own methods have failed, and desperately looking for answers that they believe can only be solved with a doctor’s expertise. Having experienced and studied Pakistan's health system, I have witnessed the reverence that people immediately offer to the doctor sahib, or Doctor Sir. Patients arrive at the doctor’s office having exhausted all other options and turn to the one person who has the knowledge and experience necessary to fix their problem. It is no wonder that people, regardless of the country, become so exasperated when a doctor is unsure about what to do or has not seen their case before: the patient expects the doctor to have already dealt with the problem in their previous experiences or at least have the necessary literature to know exactly what to do. It is this hidden expectation that is ever-present underneath the outward show of respect.
Patients respect doctors because usually, the doctor is their last hope. There are of course other physicians that the patient can turn to, but in our current healthcare system, the patient is limited in his or her options. Unlike teachers who people unfortunately consider a dime a dozen, a doctor is given the responsibility of prolonging and bettering life for his or her patients. More than respect, schooling and even cost of care, it is the responsibility of caretaking that people place in doctors and doctors alone. For this reason, doctors are given respect equivalent to the amount of importance people place on a healthy life. The majority of the world’s population will continue to respect life and also, therefore, their doctor.