Pandemic of great expectations

In addition to a pandemic of multimorbidity,¹ what we might have on our hands is a pandemic of great expectations. Aldous Huxley said that “medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.” I find that many of my patients have rather lofty and unrealistic expectations of how they should feel at all times. And if circumstances lead to their not feeling well, their doctors should certainly be able to “fix” the problem. We likely have only ourselves to blame for raising peoples’ expectations beyond what we can deliver.

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