When a self-centered doctor is diagnosed with cancer, he becomes better able to empathize with his patients and appreciate a life outside his career.
Jack McKee is a doctor with it all: he's successful, he's rich, extremely self centred and he has no problems.... until he is diagnosed with throat cancer. Now that he has seen medicine, hospitals, and doctors from a patient's perspective, he realises that there is more to being a doctor than surgery and prescriptions, and more to life than serving only his own needs.—Murray Chapman <[email protected]>
After spending his life, his career, as a physician who treated patients with less than the respect than they deserved. He becomes a patient himself and suddenly understands what it is like to be treated like he treated so many human beings who's feelings and emotions surrounding their illnesses he never stopped to consider. Karma has come to visit and he is not prepared. He assumed that because he was a physician, that he would be treated differently than the average patient. That he would have special privileges and accommodations afforded to him due to his station he so wrongly assumed he had. Every doctor should have to see this movie as part of their humanities training, perhaps then they would be less likely to lose their empathy along the way.—Lorraine Allison Traylor Paramedic
Dr Jack McKee (William Hurt) is a successful surgeon at a leading hospital. He and his wife have all the trappings of success, although Jack works such long hours that he rarely has time to see their son Nicky (Charlie Korsmo) and has become somewhat emotionally dead to his wife Anne. Jack would frequently forget the social engagements that Anne would put on his calendar.
Jack's "bedside manner" with his patients, in many cases seriously ill, is also quite lacking.The decorum in the operating theater is very casual, loud country and rock music, and the chatter between him and his partner, Dr. Murray Kaplan (Mandy Patinkin) is not particularly professional. Jack likes to joke and fool around his patients.
When a patient with a chest scar (after a heart surgery) mentions her husband is not close to her anymore, Jack responds that she should tell him that she is just like a "Playboy centerfold, because she has the staple marks to prove it."
Jack would frequently tell his interns not to get too involved with their patients. Jack saves the life of a suicide victim whose aorta was damaged, by performing a complicated heart surgery on him. However, the patient wakes up after surgery and is distraught that he never planned on waking up again. Jack is oblivious to such emotional outbursts and focuses on his job to the best of his ability.
Jack gets regular check ups from his own family physician who had seen some unusual growth in Jack's throat. But since Jack was not feeling anything, they ignored it. Jack only says that he is clearing his throat all the time now.
Returning home from a dinner party, Jack has a coughing fit. His wife Anne (Christine Lahti) is shocked when he coughs up blood all over her and the car. After an examination with Dr Leslie Abbott, she confirms that Jack has some growth and orders a biopsy.This is the first time that Jack experiences the medical establishment as a patient and is unpleasantly surprised at how the doctors dehumanize the entire experience. Abbott doesn't once ask Jack how he is or how he is feeling. She simply tells Jack what it is, and what she is going to do as the next course of action.
Anne tries to reach out to Jack and says that "they" will deal with it together. Jack is annoyed and says that it is not a team game and that he has to deal with his cancer on his own.As Jack enrolls as a patient at his own hospital (for the biopsy), he is given a mountain of forms to fill. He is made to sit in a wheelchair whenever he is transported inside the hospital. When he objects, he is told that if he trips and falls inside the hospital, the hospital would be liable. He is given a semi-private room, even though he asked for a private. Jack has a sample of the growth removed from his throat. The biopsy comes back positive for cancer.
His time spent with another, cold impersonal Abbott in this examination is the beginning of his transformation. Further tests and disappointments are blended with scenes of other patients' grace and empathy towards each other and a much better view of the delays and missteps of their doctors and medical support personnel. He is given a bowel cleaning procedure that was meant was for roommate, while Jack was under sedation from the surgery.Jack wanted the tumor to be surgically removed, but Abbott says that radiation therapy has an 80% success rate with this type of tumor, and surgery could mean that Jack loses his voice. While Jack is being treated, he cannot be performing surgeries for his patients, but he can continue to consult them.
As Jack experiences life as a patient, there comes a clearer understanding of the emotionally void hospitals, some doctors, and his own colleagues can display. He is asked to fill the same forms again in Radiology.
He befriends June Ellis (Elizabeth Perkins), a fellow cancer patient who has an inoperable brain tumor. June says that Jack is not a doctor when he is sitting in the waiting room. He is just like all the other patients and should be treated as such. June says that her doctor could not find the tumor for 3 months, even though she blacked out. She was given an aspirin, and stress management courses to begin with.She gets him to promise to never lie or mislead a patient again. Jack begins to bark at the medical establishment. Jack and June take off to see a native Indian show, but the pace is too much for her. His wife, meanwhile, struggles to understand Jack's relationship with June.
Jack's radiation treatment does not stop the cancer on his vocal cords. His despair ends in a confrontation with Dr. Leslie Abbott (Wendy Crewson), whom he provokes in a heated discussion. Jack asks a colleague he has previously ridiculed, Dr. Eli Bloomfield (Adam Arkin), to perform his needed surgery. Jack apologizes for his and Murray's insulting behavior, to which Eli replies with a smile, "Well, Jack, I've always wanted to slit your throat, and now I've got the chance." Eli's bedside manner is a perfect example for Jack.
Jack's cancer is treated and cured, but June dies. The experience changes Jack forever. When he returns to work, he begins to teach new medical interns about the importance of showing compassion and sensitivity towards their patients, which in turn will make them better doctors. Jack puts the interns in patient gowns, assigns them various illnesses and orders all the tests for them to "feel" the experience that they will soon put their patients through.
