Brief letter to colleagues.
Dear Colleagues,
When we are in the thick of it, we often hear people speak negatively about us, our coworkers, the hospital, or the healthcare industry in general.
Some of our shortcomings, we readily admit. Others, we dismiss. To accept some of the assertions would be devastating.
However, recent years have revealed a degree of failure that I never would have imagined in my most cynical interpretations.
Many of these revelations have led some to ‘accept the reality.’ Others continue to ignore the problems. And a minority attempt to shift the blame.
Some even blame the patients!
The population shares blame for the state of our healthcare industry, this is true. A common problem is that some patients simply do not care. It is hard to blame them.
I have worked in some of the highest crime neighborhoods in the country, as well as the most affluent. I have seen the differences. These are not the same healthcare experiences. I have also seen that a patient’s relationship with their health is heavily impacted by the care and attention they get from their providers. Irrespective of the community they are from.
As far as I can tell, most of the rot in healthcare can be fixed with care. A patient’s care for their health and wellbeing. A doctor’s care for their motivation to listen, question, learn, and inform.
“Oh, but the cost of healthcare.”
Bullshit.
The most common maladies can be solved with:
Self-care and attention, armed with wisdom
Good dietary and environmental advice
Avoidance of sedentary life
Social support
…and, the odd antibiotic
What is missing is the caring needed to get to the bottom of the symptoms.
Do not succumb to the lure of corporate medicine.
Yes, the people share the blame.
But, for the people to care about their health, they must be offered a service that invites this behavior.
It is up to us, brothers and sisters.
The change starts with us.
We, as societies, have been trained more and more aggressively to relinquish our personal responsibilities. It's insidious and subliminal most folk don't reralise they are being 'guided'. The modern result is expecting to be able to have a medical intervention which will stop symptoms/cure the disease in order to carry on with the lifestye which created the problem in the first place, rather than asking what the individual can do as a first step to healing and preventing further disease. That parents won't read with or otherwise educate their children because it is 'the school's job' and then blame the school for an 'underperforming' or dropout child because then blame is pointed at the eduction system. That poeple use the wortds proffered by their device of choice rather than sticking to the word they were going to use, because it's easier and requires no thoughtful decision. All those things allow those who do not see what is happening to be moved gently, silently towards obedience and compliance, with the blame culture resting on someone else's shoulders if something goes wrong.
What relinquishing personal responsibility does, in whatever aspect of our life, even those seemingly tiny, insignificant things, results in building our own prison. Once it is seen it is too late. We are also offered false choices. Would you like the purple one or the green one. Of course the phrase initially popped into my head as red/blue, so I chose different colours for the example - see how deep it runs? This programme or that one? Well, actually I don't want either/any of the choices. Easy for me, I never had TV and don't listen to radio. I choose every media I engage with.T rouble is, so many are numbed into acquiescence they don't even realise they don't want what is offered and will choose something rather than nothing. We all know 'The best of a bad lot'. Sure it's more effort to walk away and make a proper choice. The bottom line is easy necessarily the best...? I would say in most cases no, we need to put our own effort on the line and be respobsible for our self.
We need to think for ourselves, and be responsible for the outcomes of our own decisions. We need to be able to accept when we got it wrong and stop the default of pushing blame.
Thank you Remnant MD, I love reading your work.
Worked inner city Chicago in the 70’s. We didn’t have private duty nurses for the rich and famous, like I experienced in LA at an upmarket hospital in Beverly Hills in the 80’s. But care was certainly given by myself and many doctors I worked with. It is refreshing to hear a doctor suggest taking responsibility for our own health through good care of ourselves. I often think doctors are in a tough predicament when a person shows up in their office and after years of ignoring their own self care, the patient wants doctor to perform a miracle. Doctors, in my day were put on a pedestal and respected. Many deserved that honour. I know there are many doctors who care deeply for their patients, but something has changed. Access, insurance, money, time slots, advancements in healthcare all of these, none of these? Personally, I would not want to be in a hospital today as a patient or worker. So I look after my husband and myself and ensure we do all we can to stay away from our GP and or a hospital. The world has changed.