Reaching for Godhood

I think it is almost inevitable that most doctors will eventually develop some element of a god complex. Their jobs lends them authority over their patients. Most patients grant the authority automatically, and the unearned power over other people develops automatic assumption of power over other people. The phenomenon also readily overtakes people in other professions where power and authority is granted without the need to be perpetually earned, including judges, police, teachers and parents.
I expect little agreement with this thought, but I think authority figures need to continuously earn and prove the worthiness of their power. When they don’t, you end up with burned out teachers, abusive cops, corrupt judges and Morgan Stanley CEOs who collect multi-million dollar bonuses after losing billions of dollars.
I don’t have much patience for teachers who patronize adults like children I more often want to slap control freak parents in department stores than the children they ride and deride. I do not deal well with doctors who think it is enough to issue orders without thoroughly discussing all aspects of the instructions or prescriptions with their patients. I’ve stayed with a GP who has this problem, though he and I have long since wondered why the other bothers at all. In my mind, it’s a place other than an emergency room to go with a minor emergency. In his mind, I am sure that I have not been a deadbeat even as a self pay patient factors in. I have always been able to manage my GP’s personal level of God complex, in part because he does show some appreciation for my blunt honesty. That honesty has usually manifested as incredulous sneering laughs or open refusals when I have completely disagreed or knew I would be unable to follow through with specific aspects of prescribed treatment.
While in for a massive and sudden toe infection at Sturdy Hospital over the first weekend this May, Dr. Paz realized pretty quickly that he had not acquired a new worshiper.
I had seen problems at Sturdy despite my blindness, so maybe I was looking for other problems. I’ll accept some responsibility for the difficulties without getting into specifics of Doctor Paz’s upset that while he was the most educated, he was not the smartest person in the room that weekend. By the time the problems at the hospital had mounted, I was certainly more than a little cranky.
Why I don’t think I was wrong in the situation: I was arguing on grounds of treatment of care; Dr. Paz was reinforcing his God Complex to someone who wasn’t ever going to be drinking the Kool-Aid.