EXCLUSIVE: Man, 32, becomes fully paralyzed within days of catching COVID due to rare syndrome

Dr. William Dugal experienced total paralysis after developing Guillain-Barre syndrome. After a year of rehabilitation, he's back to working as surgeon.

Having Guillain-Barre syndrome changed his perspective as a doctor.

“I have more empathy and a better understanding of the patient’s experience,” he says. “I hope that I can provide that same compassion and support to other people in similar situations.”

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He's lucky that he's able to work again...

From the article:

That is flat-out misinformation given the very high symptom and disability burden found in long-term follow up studies.

 

It is absolutely stunning that so many doctors have to experience disease symptoms before they find empathy for some patient groups .This shows that way to few medical professionals actually feel any duty to understand what patients go through .

 

Or some omissions in their training. Surely it would be possible to include some empathy training?

 

if you have to instil empathy into people via a course you get a fake insincere effect that patients will see through.

 

I think you can encourage the development of genuine empathy, not really " instill it " but promote its understanding and use in appropriate circumstances.

 

I remember there was someone on Twitter arguing that medical illnesses should be experimentally induced in medical doctors during training so they can experience what patients experience, I thought that suggestion was... Interesting...

 

I've read that doctors have been taught detachment cognition because investing in pts emotions will interfere with their clinical assessment and being objective.