The Patient’s Dilemma

George Bernard Shaw in his preface to his play ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’, said: “If we pay doctors to take legs off, would it not stand to reason that we will then see more men with less legs?” Shaw clearly held physicians in poor regard.

Hair transplant surgeons are trained and compensated to do hair transplants. Unfortunately, these doctors are the most knowledgeable doctors who understand hair loss and much of its nuances. Why do I say unfortunately? To answer that, I pose another question: Why is there no group of doctors who specialize in hair loss and get compensated for it? Think about it and you understand the dilemma for the hair loss patient.

1) Why would anyone pay a doctor to diagnosis genetic male patterned hair loss when you can do it yourself and treat it with internet acquired finasteride or grocery store purchased minoxidil? That is what is done today for many hair loss sufferers.

2) Only the hair transplant surgeon has the potential to profit from the diagnosis and treatment of hair loss because a few of the many balding men followed by a good doctor will eventually become hair transplant patients. As a good will gesture, our clinic has waived clinic charges for consultations.

3) I generally tell patients that a doctor’s ethics may be determined by how he ‘sells’ his service. Find out if your doctor uses a salesman to front for him or does he/she invest his own quality time to diagnose your problem and communicate his suggestions to you?

So to answer my own question, a good doctor must always be able to put his patient’s welfare above his own interests. How common is it that doctors can put their patient’s interest above their own? We can not answer this question because we can not easily count those with missing legs (metaphorically speaking). I have taken from memory an old Jewish proverb which states that you can tell the fabric of a man by one who treats his business clients in a manner that he treats his own family. That applies equally to cutting off legs or doing hair transplants. Integrity can be a rare commodity, even amongst doctors who took the Hippocratic Oath to serve his patient’s interest above everything else.