When doing less is the hardest part of being a doctor

In medicine, more tests feel safer, more drugs feel reassuring and more procedures feel decisive. But safer, reassuring and decisive are not always the same as better.

Early in training, doctors are taught what to do. We memorize algorithms, master protocols and learn to move quickly. Action is rewarded. Hesitation is questioned. The unspoken lesson is that a good doctor is one who does something — orders a test, prescribes a drug, recommends a procedure. Silence can look like uncertainty. Restraint can look like neglect. We are trained in motion and evaluated on decisiveness, learning early that standing still, even briefly, can invite scrutiny. So we act — often appropriately, sometimes reflexively. It takes much longer to learn the opposite lesson: that sometimes the best medical decision is to pause.

Patients rarely come to the clinic hoping to be told to wait. They arrive with symptoms, fears, expectations and often the quiet belief that something must be done to justify the visit. A prescription validates their suffering. A test confirms that it was real. An intervention reassures them that their concerns were taken seriously. Doing nothing — no matter how carefully explained — can feel dismissive, even when it isn’t. To a patient, restraint can look like indifference; to a family member, uncertainty; to someone who has waited weeks for an appointment, even rejection.

Doctors feel this pressure, too. We worry about how we are perceived — about being seen as lazy, outdated or careless. We worry about missing something important, about the one rare diagnosis hiding behind a common complaint, about the patient who comes back worse and the quiet voice that asks whether we should have acted sooner. In a system that increasingly equates care with activity, restraint can feel like professional risk. And yet, much of good medicine lives there.

In my field, this tension plays out every day. Not every abnormal number needs immediate correction. Not every fluctuation demands intervention. Not every finding on a scan requires action. Not every patient benefits from another pill added to an already long list. Knowing when to step back requires more than knowledge — it requires judgment, earned slowly and sometimes painfully through years of seeing what happens after decisions are made. It requires experience, pattern recognition, humility, and comfort with uncertainty. That last part is the hardest.

Waiting is not passive. It is not indifference. It demands attention — watching patterns rather than isolated numbers, following trends instead of reacting to single results, listening closely when a patient says something feels different even if the data hasn’t changed. Waiting also means accountability. When you choose not to act, you carry that decision with you. You remember the patient. You think about them after clinic hours. You check the chart again. In many ways, restraint demands more vigilance than intervention ever does.

Explaining this to patients takes time. It requires slowing down and having conversations that don’t fit neatly into checklists or templates. It means saying, “Here’s what we’re watching,” and “Here’s why acting now may cause more harm than good.” It means being honest about what we know, what we don’t and what we are prepared to do if things change, while acknowledging fear — both theirs and ours — without letting fear dictate the plan.

There are moments when restraint is misunderstood. A patient may leave disappointed, wondering why no prescription was given. A family member may feel uneasy when no test is ordered “just to be safe.” Even colleagues may question a conservative approach when more aggressive options are available. Sometimes restraint is mistaken for inaction, sometimes for lack of effort, occasionally even for lack of compassion. But medicine isn’t about appearing busy or filling every silence with orders. At its best, medicine is about judgment — applied carefully, consistently and with humility.

There is also a quieter truth we rarely acknowledge: unnecessary care carries its own consequences. Every extra test raises the possibility of false alarms. Every added medication brings side effects and interactions. Every intervention has a cost—financial, physical emotional — that patients carry long after the visit ends. Sometimes, doing more doesn’t relieve anxiety. It multiplies it. I have seen patients overwhelmed not by illness itself, but by cascades of investigations that uncovered incidental findings, each demanding explanation, follow-up and worry. I have seen people burdened by medications they never truly needed, managing side effects for problems that might have resolved on their own. Choosing restraint is not about denying care. It is about protecting patients from harm that often arrives disguised as help.

This understanding doesn’t come early. It comes after years of watching well-intentioned actions complicate lives, after seeing patients carry the consequences of decisions made too quickly, too defensively, too automatically. It comes from learning that urgency is not the same as importance, and that good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes. With time, perspective shifts. Confidence becomes quieter. The need to prove something fades. What remains is judgment — earned, imperfect and careful — and the humility to trust it even when restraint is misunderstood.

When a doctor decides not to add another test or another drug, it isn’t because nothing is being done. It’s because something else is happening — listening, watching, thinking, protecting. Good medicine doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it works quietly, in restraint, patience, in the courage to wait. And that, too, is care.