Do you trust your doctor?
By Charlie Gillis, Julia Belluz, and Josh Dehaas - Monday, August 16, 2010 - 0 Comments
An exclusive Maclean’s poll shows that an increasing number of Canadians don’t
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After five miscarriages, and with the odds of ever having children stacked against her, Lee Dix was glad to get a second opinion. It was the summer of 2000, and the Toronto woman had been referred to a gynecologist based at Scarborough Hospital, Dr. Richard Austin, whom she hoped would eventually deliver her first baby. But far from feeding her optimism, Austin told Dix she had a benign tumor called a fibroid in her uterus, and made a provisional diagnosis of endometriosis, a painful disorder where cells on the uterine wall grow out of control. Between 2002 and 2005, the greying physician performed two operations on Dix—one a total abdominal hysterectomy, the other to remove her remaining ovary (she’d had one taken out in a previous operation). “I just went with what he said,” Dix now recalls. “I trusted doctors, and I thought that if anyone is going to work on me, they must have the proper schooling and knowledge.”
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Maclean's Interview: Paul Whang
By Brian Bethune - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:30 PM - 8 Comments
An anaesthetist tells all: on surgeons’ personality quirks, exploding patients and what really goes on in operating rooms
Photographs by Andrew Tolson
Dr. Paul Whang, 53, who trained at McMaster University in Hamilton and at Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital, is currently an anaesthetist at Humber River Regional Hospital in west-end Toronto. His specialty offers him a unique perspective in the operating room—a key member of the OR team, but primarily an observer, mainly of the patient but also of the surgeons and nurses. He has worked at a half-dozen Toronto-area hospitals, and in his new book, Operating Room Confidential, he offers a frank, sometimes surprising and often funny account of his behind-the scenes recollections.
Q: Why did you write this book?
A: Have you read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential? He talks about what really happens behind the kitchen doors. It was raucous and funny and informative. And I realized many people have a certain idea when they watch shows like House or ER, and some of it is true but a lot of it isn’t, and in addition there’s a lot of things and routines and rituals that we go through in the OR. That was the inspiration right there.Q: Are your colleagues going to like it?
A: Well, they’re getting more and more interested, and sometimes that’s interesting: when we’re working in the OR and something happens, they look at me and say, “Paul, don’t put this in the book.” I have to promise, “Don’t worry! Names will be hidden.” -
Is a therapist allowed to do that?
By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 9 Comments
In the drama ‘In Treatment,’ Dr. Paul Weston seems to have a problem with boundaries
Early on in the half-hour HBO drama In Treatment, Dr. Paul Weston, a therapist portrayed with understated aplomb by the Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, is seen struggling to unclog the toilet in his home practice. Soon, Laura arrives, an alluring 30-year-old anesthesiologist who insists both that she is in love with him and that he secretly loves her. “I am not a realistic option,” Paul tells her, addressing an infatuation common to psychoanalysis called erotic transference. Suddenly, Laura stands. “I need to pee,” she says. “It’s blocked up,” replies Paul. Laura moves to the door to Paul’s home, domain of his wife and children. Paul grows uncomfortable. “I bet that didn’t come up in med school—a patient in love with the therapist asks to use a bathroom,” says Laura. “What should the therapist do?”Actually, the question rarely comes up. “This is why I have ambivalence about the show, it seems like there’s a career’s worth of ethical dilemmas in every season,” says Ryan Howes, an L.A. psychologist who groans each time an episode appears in his TiVo cue, so much does it feel like a continuation of his workday. “I find myself doing a lot of backseat driving.” Yet he’s hooked, as are many therapists, who hail the drama as the most accurate depiction of their work yet to hit movie and TV screens. At once cerebral and earthy—how often do TV plots turn on a toilet plunger?—as well as gloriously talky, In Treatment, now in its second season on HBO Canada, is as close to theatre as it is to the 50-minute sessions it so faithfully reproduces. And it’s at least as prone to hyperbole.
