A Mutually Trusting, Harmonious Doctor-Patient Relationship Is a Key Guarantee of Efficacy

China's long-standing authoritarian culture and today's rapidly developing society have left many people full of resentment, short-tempered, ready to pick a fight with anyone at any moment. We live in a torn-apart world; this is an undeniable fact, and communication between people is sometimes simply impossible.

This morning, when I went to the market to buy groceries, a shopper walked up to a fish stall and asked the vendor whether she had by mistake sold him a grass carp as a black carp the day before. The female vendor denied it; the shopper said little and walked away. He had not gone far when the woman began, with the utmost venom, to call him an idiot, worse than a pig or dog; the cruelty of her language was shocking.

At the entrance of my own residential compound, I often see two drivers living in the same complex cursing each other viciously over a car blocking the road, and before long coming to blows.

Since entering medicine, the emotionally extreme people I have seen are beyond counting; angry, explosive people come to consult or to pick a fight all the time. There are also some readers who, because of my articles,

Fortunately, I have always been easygoing; though I strive to be humble, I will never wear a constant ingratiating smile to please anyone, and I have always held to the principle of conducting myself neither servile nor overbearing. When I encounter emotional extremes, my measure is to keep my distance and stay silent. I do not answer back, but I also never risk treating them.

Some religious people may invoke religious spirit to demand that doctors be more compassionate and tolerate extreme patients. I would rather suggest that such religious people become doctors themselves, even at the cost of their lives, leaving their families behind without a care.