This statement suggests that doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals make decisions and diagnose patients using a somewhat subjective approach as there is no right or wrong in medicine.
On the contrary to this statement, not all aspects of Medicine are subjective, such as some common conditions which have been known for a while, like bacterial infections. It can be argued that in these cases, the decision for treatment by the doctor will not require any guesswork as there is a remedy which has been tested and proved. It can be considered an absolute response to prescribe a patient who is showing signs of infection with a course of antibiotics. Some situations in medicine would also cause health professionals to react in an almost automatic and absolute manner. An example of this is when a patient appears to be suffering from a cardiac arrest, the act of providing CPR and trying to resuscitate the patient seems like the right course of action.
However, it can also be argued that CPR isn’t an absolute response as the professionals have to consider whether this is the correct approach for each particular patient. A ‘do not resuscitate’ order is placed on some patients whom doctors believe wouldn’t survive irregardless of the intervention and the process would put them through unnecessary additional pain. This shows the impact and subjectivity of medical ethics which is applied to aspect of healthcare.
In conclusion, this statement isn’t without merit as quite often doctors have to base their diagnoses on guesswork as each patient and the conditions they are suffering from will be very unique. Overall, I can conclude that do doctors rely on guesswork to some extent, but with a moral baseline made of absolute. So it is actually a combination of guesswork and absolutes that the medical profession deal with.
Life of a Medic 