Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s suggestion to “do your own research” before accepting safe, evidence-based medical interventions, while failing to provide Americans with specific guidance about trusted sources, sparks confusion and anxiety. As the mother of young children, the daughter of a cancer survivor, and a neonatal critical care physician, I expect his remarks will leave families bewildered and doctors frustrated.
RFK Jr.’s words imply that families should view physicians and the information they provide with skepticism, even though they are guided by principles that prioritize patients. Beyond facts discoverable through research, doctors synthesize years of schooling, clinical training, and experience into direct patient care. Collaboration, not suspicion, forms the foundation of health and healing. My family learned this firsthand.
When I was 5 and my brother was 3, my mother was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Her doctors estimated she had only a few years to live. To preserve those years, she began the first of many rounds of chemotherapy, grueling treatments intended to extend what must have felt like borrowed time.
I was too young to understand much of the change cancer catalyzed in our home. I imagine conversations behind closed doors preceded the seismic shifts in the expectations, focus, and trajectory of our family. My parents now tried to plan for a future in which my father raised two small children alone.
Pragmatic changes followed. My brother and I were active swimmers—but only with our mother (to this day, I do not think I have ever seen my father in a pool). Instead, we became ice skaters. My father grew up playing hockey, so it would be something we would have in common.
As our family transformed, bracing for grief and loss, something unexpected happened. My mother lived. Forty years later, through stretches of substantial sickness and interludes of remission, she is still here.
What’s perhaps even more surprising than my mother’s survival, though, is the trust she’s maintained in science. The doctors were wrong. But she did not reject everything medical because of miscalculations. My mother continued to engage with her physicians, recognizing that to err is human. And doctors are human.
Her survival stems from a well-functioning patient-physician relationship and the reasonable beliefs at its core. She never expected her doctors to be perfect. She knew they would do their best to provide personalized, data-driven guidance. She also understood that advice would change with new discoveries and conditions.
Furthermore, her doctors’ continued treatment was never contingent on her following their every recommendation. Early in her treatment, her oncologist urged her to consider bone marrow transplantation, a potential cure. While intellectually it made sense, my mother refused, describing an uneasy gut feeling. I’m sure her doctors were disappointed, worried she might not survive. But they steadfastly supported our family, ensuring she would benefit years later from a different cure.
Undoubtedly, growing up steeped in these experiences contributed to my becoming a doctor. My background and the role models I had for patient-physician collaboration influence my relationships with families. In the intensive care unit, I treat babies who face serious medical emergencies. I have a lot of challenging conversations with families. I listen and prioritize the families’ goals, and I share my most transparent assessments and comprehensive plans. As someone who empathizes with how the gravity of medical information impacts patients and loved ones, I try hard to make sure that the information I give is correct.
But perhaps to focus entirely on whether doctors are right or wrong—even when it’s life-changingly consequential—is to lose sight of something even more important—perseverance through ups and downs. What if, realizing her oncologists had misgauged my mother’s survival, my parents dismissed everything her physicians counseled thereafter? I doubt she would be alive today without the benefits derived from their longitudinal, therapeutic patient-physician relationship.
Patients and families today not only face the difficulty of overcoming illness. They must navigate information-gathering and relationship-building in an increasingly polarized and algorithm-driven world. Physician shortages and personality differences pose additional obstacles. Personally and professionally, I know we need to effectively replicate relationships like the ones my mother forged with her doctors.
To do that, trust must reside in the patient-physician relationship itself. This relationship forms the very heart of medicine. Hope emerges from this back and forth, and from how dynamic and responsive it has the potential to be. Science continues to evolve. So too does the patient-physician bond, which remains central to health, irrespective of advances.
Dr. Brooke Redmond is a neonatal critical care physician at the Yale School of Medicine and a Yale Public Voices fellow of the Op-Ed Project.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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