Submitted by Marleen Kunneman, PhD; Michael R. Gionfriddo, PharmD, PhD; Victor M. Montori, MD, MSc
Metaphors are common in clinical medicine and can be helpful in discussing and understanding the complexities of health and illness. Blood vessels are like plumbing, the brain is like a computer, and when facing illness we use all weapons available to fight the disease. The creativity of the human mind is boundless. Metaphors can help communicate and retain complex concepts between clinicians and between clinicians and patients, with clinicians who use more metaphors considered better communicators.1 Yet, these metaphors can be unhelpful when they become so internalised that we don’t recognize them anymore, and, unconsciously, they shape how we think and act. 2
When it comes to medical decision making, the relationship between the clinician and the patient is often compared to a pilot that takes a passenger to his destination, a plumber that fixes the leak, or a mechanic that fixes your car. We need to accept that the pilot, the plumber and the mechanic are the experts and that they are therefore able to make decisions about how to address the problems. We, the ordinary people, have not studied and/or gained sufficient experience to understand these issues, let alone to be meaningfully involved in making such decisions. Such metaphors are often used by opponents of shared decision making to illustrate that the expertise necessary to understand the complex issues of health and illness is not easily translated in the limited time frame of an encounter, and therefore, patients should respect and trust clinicians’ expertise and delegate to them the difficult task of deciding what to do.
In shared decision making (SDM), clinicians and patients work together to figure out how to best address the patient’s situation. It is a conversation between the clinician and patient, a way to craft care, and a way to fundamentally care for this patient, not just for people like this patient. 3 This characteristic makes it inappropriate to use metaphors like mechanics fixing a car. Mechanics take care of cars, not of the owners. It is rare, exceptional, for a mechanic (or pilot, or plumber) to see the owner’s situation in high definition. At best, in fulfilling their duties – fixing the car – they can honor the relationship between the ‘object’ and the ‘owner’. In fundamentally caring for this patient, however, clinicians must take care of both the object – the body – and the owner. This is because, as Hitchens said, patients don’t have a body, they are a body.4
A serious illness that disrupts a person’s hopes and dreams should not be compared to a bump in the road which causes your car to break down. The car does not ‘feel’. The car does not experience side effects. Having an issue or needing maintenance does not change the cars experience of being a car or how it views itself, or it’s ‘carness’. Conversely, humans do feel, they experience side effects, and illness can affect how people view themselves and their place and relationship with society. Furthermore, if the patient’s situation is not addressed in a way that fits their life, they cannot just go back to the shop and undo the repair. Or just replace the broken parts, or, for that matter, get a new ‘object’ and replace the old one altogether. If only health were that simple. Indeed, in a service industry like automobile repair, you don’t co-create an oil change.5 But when it comes to care, clinicians and patients co-create ways to address the patient’s situation. It is this patient’s situation that should shape how care is decided on and delivered, and the method behind care and decisions about health care is the deeply human activity of having meaningful conversations between clinicians and patients.
Using de-humanizing comparisons can be problematic in shaping how we think and act, and in how we are understood and perceived. Most importantly, when using such metaphors, a fundamental aspect of medicine – caring – gets lost, forgotten, or neglected. Metaphors are common and they can support a complex conversation about health or illness, but we must be careful that these metaphors do not distract us from caring.
References
- Casarett D, Pickard A, Fishman JM, et al. Can metaphors and analogies improve communication with seriously ill patients? J Palliat Med. 2010;13(3):255-260.
- https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/the-trouble-with-medicines-metaphors/374982/. (2014) Accessed April 2017.
- Kunneman M, Montori VM, Castaneda-Guarderas A, Hess E. What is shared decision making? (and what it is not). Acad Emerg Med. 2016;23(12):1320-1324.
- Hitchens, C. Mortality. (2012) Atlantic Books Ltd.
- Leppin, AL. https://minimallydisruptivemedicine.org/2013/08/23/minimally-disruptive-medicine-at-your-service/ (2013) Accessed March 2017.
