You are absolutely correct! Looking back at the best healthcare providers I've had, they've all taken the time to get to know me. I used to be adamantly against seeing nurse practitioners because society has incorrectly led us to believe that doctors are better because they've had "better" schooling. One thing that the nurse practitioners and midwives I've seen have all had in common is care for their patients as a person, and it has greatly advanced the levels of care I've received. Don't get me wrong, I've had some fabulous doctors, too, but they've all taken time to get the bigger picture of my life, not just my medical history. The attitude of so many doctors has shifted towards the mentality that they know better than their patients because they have a better understanding of how the human body functions. In reality, though, it's often only a small part of the picture. Thank you for fighting the good fight for better healthcare for everyone! We need more healthcare advocates like you!

This is such an important topic. My doctors have failed me, many times. Worse, I have failed myself! Thank you for shining your Light on this.

This turned my life around, thank you, I will find a better health system

As someone who was once a doctor and who has been a patient for the past 20 years - I couldn't agree with you more about the importance of relationship as a critical and missing piece in our health care system and doctor -patient relationship. What a terrific talk with the examples you give and the 5 minute fix that builds trust and relationship. Thanks so much for sharing Eva and congrats for getting your work and word out!

Ms. Minkoff makes several compelling arguments about our healthcare system and particularly focuses on the relationship between doctors and patients. She talks about a patient feeling like an objective vs feeling like a human-being during interactions with their physician and argues for a five-minute conversation with each patient to get to know them on a deeper level. While I agree that physicians should treat every patient as an individual and attempt to get to know them on a personal level, I argue that this isn’t always a viable option, and it’s not the physician’s fault. Doctors go through a decade or more of intense education, learning all there is about anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology and procedures, where in that education is there time for personal communication skills? Where is there time for a doctor to have a life outside of school/work to be able to engage with others? Once they finish school, they enter a society that lacks physicians meaning they are seeing more patients than they should each day. This leads to shorter appointments, less time to engage with each patient, and increased stress. Doctors have to “put on a mask” before every appointment they have and change it between each appointment, and at the end of the day take all of those masks off and try to engage with their own family and friends. It’s an ethical dilemma doctors have of wanting to help their patients more and being constrained by stress and the healthcare system itself. Business professionals run hospitals and try to maximize income each day, doctors try to keep up with them to keep their jobs. So yes, I agree with Ms. Minkoff, as a future doctor myself, I hope to know all of my patients on an individual level, healthcare is better off that way and patient’s will trust their doctors more leading to better outcomes, it’s just not doable without changes at a higher level. These are changes we should push for as a society and I plead with patients to try to understand what doctors are going through themselves.

Interesting premise! This needs to get around

So important point of medical system that it needs huge improvement and concrete steps of changing. We needed someone speak out loud like her for a long time. Thank you for the brave voice of yours!🙏

This is an incredibly eye opening TED talk. As a second year medical student, I hope to one day be the type of physician who takes the time to interact and get to know each and every one of my patients. There is a very deep connection between the body, mind, and soul, so I really like that Eva mentioned that if it is important to you as the patient, bring it up to your doctor. Unfortunately, I know that this is not the case for many people in their physician-patient relationship. I have shadowed multiple doctors who, due to severe time constraints and patient load, simply cannot get to know their patients very well. They would send the medical assistant in to get a history and the physician would go in to the exam room for about five minutes before moving on to the next patient. I noticed that this was a bigger problem when I shadowed at a volunteer clinic and clinic for low income families. When I shadowed other doctors at their private practice clinics, it was a very different experience and they had a very well established relationship with their patients. This all makes me think about the medical ethics principle of justice, where the goal is for there to be a fair and equal distribution of healthcare resources. With the current physician shortage we have in the United States, it is sadly not alarming that low income neighborhoods take the brunt of this shortage. As a result, the physicians who work in these areas are severely overworked and burnt out. I have always considered what can be done to alleviate this physician shortage and to create a better healthcare experience for these patients. I think that cities should look into ways to incentivize practitioners to work in these areas. But I also really like how Eva pointed out that a five minute assessment can make a huge difference. I understand that in a busy work day with multiple patients waiting to be seen, adding five minutes to each patient really adds up, but in the end the goal should be to treat the patient as a whole, not just as a walking symptom. The big picture is being missed in many cases and it is simply due to the fact that the patient and the physician do not have enough time to talk. Another solution could be to have medical assistants do what Eva did and do the assessment on the patient themselves before the patient goes in to see the doctor. That way any relevant information can still be shared with the doctors and it wouldn’t add too much time to the doctor’s already busy schedule.

Beautiful!

She brought up so many good points from both perspectives of a doctor and physician. I agree that patients need to advocate for themselves, and doctors need to ask more, listen, and be curious. As a medical student, I understand the rush, the pressure, the stress that we go through, and I loved her emphasis on social history because that is such a huge determining factor in a person's health. It blows my mind that doctors may skip over these questions, yet I still see that today in current practices, which is an example of what I do NOT want to happen in my own practice. It goes against the ethical principles of justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence when doctors treat patients as objects, instead of people who have a life story to them. How can we treat someone's health, when we don't know who they are or what has impacted their health? I feel like this also goes along with treating the source of the problem, instead of only the symptoms. Medicine is shifting towards looking at people as a whole, with a more emphasis on communication, trust, and, respect. She puts the solutions in such concrete principles, which are to ask more, listen more, and be curious. As students, I feel like it is so easy to overlook these principles, to get caught up in our studies, and I feel like people around me are also talking like they have something to prove, but we are never encouraged to listen. Listening is huge, and shows signs of understanding and compassion. Curiosity is also extremely important because it shows genuineness and support, but never once did the people around me in medicine emphasize this and how important it is in medicine. Emphasized in research, absolutely, but curiosity goes such a long way in clinical practice and day-to-day interactions. Her talk is much needed, and I hope that more medical students listen to this to embrace the principles and improve our healthcare practices.

: Eva makes some great points regarding the importance of building a meaningful doctor patient relationship. I appreciate how she comments on both the patient’s expectations and the physicians. As a current medical student, I understand the constraints that a physician has when seeing a patient. Even in our training we are constrained to approximately 17 minutes for a visit. Eva’s final comments really resonated with me, “Let’s bring human care back to healthcare.” This is why so many of us have gone into medicine. We have committed ourselves to serving our communities and providing them with the best possible care. Unfortunately, this can be forgotten due to the need for efficiency and cost effectiveness required by physicians in the United States. This concept brings some interesting dialogue regarding the medical ethical principles of justice vs beneficence. As for the pillar of justice, one could argue that the more time we spend with one patient is less time we have to spend with other possibly higher need patients. While I understand this argument, I prefer to focus on the pillar of beneficence. Doctor must understand that we are not superheroes. We cannot save or fix everyone, but what we can do is give every patient we see our undivided attention and provide them with the safety and respect to speak their minds. Overall, patients are responsible for their own health, but we need to provide them with the ability to choose what is best for them. This includes providing an environment that promotes patient autonomy and allows patients to be comfortable enough to tell them everything.

This was an incredibly inspiring talk, though the perspective may be a little easier said than done. As a current medical student, it is my perception that communication has been a subject of issue in medical care for a long time. There are numerous books, numerous studies demonstrating that physicians and patients do not communicate well. They talk, but they do not really communicate. I agree with Miss Minkoff’s proposal, and as a future physician I will absolutely attempt to ‘ask more’. Inevitably, there will be days (hopefully not many) where I will be rushed, and I hope I will have the willpower to slow down and ask my patients the right questions. The questions that will give me real answers, the questions as miss Minkoff described as pertaining to my patient’s life outside of their medical chart. Knowing how the hustle and bustle of day-to-day tasks consume my day currently, there’s great strides that need to be made if I am going to treat my patients in this manner. I imagine this would be the same for many physicians, who feel the pressure of administration to see their patients in a timely manner, spend less, and make more. Again, I say, this might be easier said than done. However, I agree that it should be done. As a patient myself, I have had doctors on both sides of the spectrum and there is no doubt that one side of the spectrum leaves me walking out of the hospital or clinic feeling much more respected than the other side of the spectrum. Medicine is run as a business and with any great business model there is efficiency. I think efficiency has replaced meaningful relationships with patients. There is a biomedical ethical principle known as beneficence. I believe the way medicine is run today, there is a significant lack of ethical treatment of patients, mostly disregarding this ethical principle of beneficence. This biomedical ethical principle along with three others are at the core of medical care and decision making and seem to be lacking in today’s medical care. Though the ideas mentioned by miss Minkoff may be easier said than done, I think they absolutely should be done in order to restore what is most beneficial for our patients. I will strive as a doctor to implement these strategies in my patient care.

Such a powerful talk on how we can give physicians a truly holistic understanding of their patients to help them truly achieve better outcomes

Loved this talk - great job Eva!

Teamwork is necessary to solve problems like this one.

Great talk Eva, covered some really interesting and thought provoking points.

Really great points!

This is everything. Thank you for giving us hope and direction.

Such a great conversation. I love the fact that you see both sides and give actionable resolution to this HUGE problem we are having in the country! We need to see both sides and help to understand that we can no longer wait for the government to solve this problem but instead start making meaningful steps towards resolution together as practitioners and patients!

You got it!!! And we need to include THE FAMILY but too often they get dismissed and disrespected and looked down upon. They are experts of their own kind and need to be acknowledged-I’ve spent a lifetime being dismissed by health care professionals-making me entirely distrustful of the system and staying as far away from it as possible-especially all the polypharmacy!!!!

I think Eva brings up some very important points that can be quite uncomfortable to talk about. She brings up the idea that change in the healthcare starts with the doctor/patient relationship which I couldn’t agree to more. Yes, it is going to take systemic change to fix the healthcare system but where does one go with that? Eva brings it back to the basic fundamentals of relationships where anyone can relate to. I think this idea comes from the ethical idea of beneficence which is defined as an idea that there is a moral obligation to act for the benefit of others. If this is where patients and doctors build a foundation upon then change can happen. Instead of having the mindset that my doctor doesn’t understand me or my patients don’t understand me as Eva discusses, we can work together to fix the ‘Broken Healthcare System’. Focus on the aspects that everyone can contribute too and is a part of every time they interact with the healthcare system, that being the doctor/patient relationship.

Deeply thought provoking talk. Important to listen right to the end.

So great! Cheers Eva!!!

Best presentation I've ever heard around this topic. I hope more see this video. Thank you

I’m surprised at how many Ted talks in the last year or two have consistently brought up the lack of communication and trust in the doctor-patient relationship and how it’s severely jeopardizing our current healthcare system in the U.S. As Ms. Minkoff stated, patients don’t typically feel heard by their physicians and physicians don’t feel their patients understand that doctors do have limitations, such as in treatment options. As with similar discussions on this topic of the lack of human connection in the doctor-patient relationship, doctors are consistently doing themselves and their patients a disservice. Doctors are taught about the ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and patient autonomy. Beneficence entails that a physician provides the best care he/she can deliver to a patient, while non-maleficence entails that a physician does no harm to his/her patients. A physician’s ability to uphold these ethical principles seem to be at most risk when the relationship is haphazardly rushed whether it be due to a physician asking inadequate questions within the interview, not truly listening to the patients’ concerns or past medical, family, or social history or, simply not having enough time to build a foundation with his/her patients. I feel a physician should take a step back at times to reflect on his/her patient relationships and ponder what is causing those relationships to flourish or wither away. Everyone in their own occupations, not just physicians, can easily become swept up in day-to-day operations, meeting deadlines, pleasing supervisors, and working with current and new colleagues that take away from the original purpose of why a person may have picked that occupation in the first place. Therefore, physicians should not only remember to take care of themselves as that alone can truly affect their relationships with patients (i.e., burnout), but they should remember why they chose medicine in the first place. This simple reflection can assist physicians in not only connecting with their patients and building that necessary rapport, but also uphold the imperative medical ethical principles of beneficence and non-maleficence.

Nice Insights

this is awesome

Scientific research about problem.. how many deeply understood what problem co Rd next future.. how many scientist understood actually really probably problem

Realistically speaking, when we don't understand the love of God and the plan of redemption and the great sacrifice of JESUS CHRIST nothing else will make sense.

Adhd treatment going against the symptoms Missed an appointment? That will be $100.

First God is Head about miracles..then come scientist public of God hide

this doesn’t make sense.

The state of our Healthcare is hitting rock Bottom. Today I witnessed a Healthcare person in her scrubs wearing a stethoscope around her neck and get this, using a motorized store supplied wheelchair/shopping cart. How pathetic is that? Would you trust her advice or level of care? Your answer should be NO.