Docs, lawyers have much in common
On my office wall hangs a portrait of the 1949 Spokane County Bar Association. My deceased father is in the photo along with dozens of attorneys who walked through my childhood, men who took pride in their esteemed profession.
If I had a television in my office, I’d drape a black curtain over it every time the political ad comes on urging voters to say yes to Initiative 330, which would limit malpractice awards in Washington state. I wouldn’t want these 1949 attorneys to see the way modern lawyers are depicted in the ad. They sit around a conference table, smoke cigars and gloat over money earned in greedy ways.
Another initiative on November’s ballot, I-336, calls for stricter sanctions against incompetent doctors. The insurance companies are the main target in the I-336 campaign, but the two campaigns, taken together, tarnish the images of lawyers and doctors.
Though people don’t often tell doctor jokes, they do buy into negative stereotypes about cold and arrogant docs who drive their BMWs to the golf course every Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps that’s why the doctors in the pro I-330 commercials are mostly soft-spoken women.
The campaigns pit doctors against lawyers when, in reality, the two groups of professionals have much in common. That’s just my opinion. And unlike lawyers, I don’t have to prove it in court. And unlike doctors, I don’t have to worry that this opinion will mean the difference between life and death. Which leads me to the first commonality shared by doctors and lawyers. They both possess:
Joke Jobs. Some jobs seem so hard that I call them “joke jobs.” It’s a cosmic joke that anyone would be asked to do this work day after day without losing their minds. Physicians treat people in physical pain. Lawyers help people in emotional pain. Often, patients and clients hold unrealistic expectations of exactly how much their physicians and lawyers can do for them.
Each time I walk out of a doctor’s office into a waiting room, the room is crammed with patients, filled with questions and expectations, believing that their medical concerns trump everyone else’s. I often wonder why more doctors don’t view that same scene and go running out the back door.
Recently, I spent a day in family court listening to a custody battle. I intended to write a column about it but didn’t out of respect for the child involved. I worried the child would grow up, read the column and see, in black and white, her parents’ vast inadequacies. I left the courtroom feeling compassion for the two lawyers, but mostly compassion for the judge, who has to listen to stories of dysfunction day after day.
Time Turmoil. Lawyers in private practice bill for their time. The billable hours pay for the vast overhead common to small and large practices. Doctors schedule office visits with little breathing space in between. They, too, have enormous overhead concerns and added pressure for efficiency from insurance companies.
Most doctors and lawyers I know didn’t choose these professions to get rich. They chose law and medicine because they desired to help people. Which leads to the next commonality.
Nostalgia for the Past. Doctors reminisce about the days when they had time to be listeners and healers. Lawyers reminisce about the days when handshakes formed a forever bond, and civility ruled in the courtroom. Some gifted lawyers and physicians I know plan early exits from professions that cannot afford to lose them.
Doctors and lawyers need to use their considerable smarts to figure out the root reasons their professions have strayed so far from Dr. Marcus Welby and Perry Mason.
Blaming each other is too simplistic. Who thought up billable hours in the first place? Who invented 15-minute doctor appointments?
I wish doctors and lawyers would work together on their common problems, instead of cannibalizing one another’s professions through nasty initiative campaigns that, in the end, do much more harm than good.