After some decades of practicing clinical medicine, I have arrived to the – obvious? – conclusion that it is by no means that straightforward. The slightest measure you undertake crosses a world of expectations or doubts – be it in my patient’s brain or in mine -. The point of view about the issue is completely different depending on if you are a patient or a manager. In the first case, you claim for every attention, as fast as it is possible, and, once you’re in, there’s no concern about time consumption. In the second, the former is no more a patient. Rather, he or she becomes a client or a consumer, presenting with a typified problem, to solve in a pre-fixed time or schedule, eliminating – if possible – embarrassing individuals characteristics complicating the issue.The formers claim for individual solutions to their individual case. The latter impose an industrial solution in which an algorithmic management is applied to a predictable (¿?) course. In between, there is us. That is to say, there is a group of people caught in the professional responsibility trap, trained to be exhausted, and to go on. Never to say: “I don’t know”. Never to acknowledge: “there is no hope”. Never to be fully transparent and let them know that the health system – whatever, wherever – is wrong and deceiving. That a fully and comprehensive individual medicine is something we have abandoned in the old way of idealism, to adopt this that we have instead, this kind of practice we perform everyday, this kind of monster that we try to – so hard, so desperately – extend between what is feasible and what is expected by so many to fulfill their needs, consuming so bad our coronaries, our health.
@frelimpio
P.S. Looking for an editorial group for a joint venture. Have a look in the post inside!
