In reply to the final paragraph of my previous mail:
>We must alter our culture and organisation in such a way that we are able to
>husband our resources effectively to allow sudden demands and genuine distress
-
>as far as I can see this means actually working well all the time but not to
the
>limit of our capacity.
Paul Robinson writes:
>I see this as reaching the point of seeing the 'patient' as a unit of
>work rather than a fellow human being who is in distress. The 'Doctors
>to be' tv series charted the metamorphosis from enthusiastic and caring
>18 year old to disgruntled and cynical houseman.
>
>I used to think of this as mostly a hospital problem, and it is
>upsetting to see how far the "patient as object" view point has
>permeated general practice.
I am disturbed by this response - the point I was trying to make is that it is
only by husbanding our emotional and intellectual resources effectively that we
are able to treat the patient as a fellow human being in distress and not as an
object. The problem with medical training seems to me that it takes the 18 year
old's desire to be all- caring and adds to it the medical profession's culture
of being able to be always working if necessary - in the 1990s with a dash of
economics thrown in. This cocktail produces the "patient as object" result
>The answer is to re-humanise the doctors. Now there's a challenge!
A challenge that I think we should meet both by being humble enough to discard
many of our entrenched views about the way in which we work and human enough to
learn to enjoy life again - and hopefully thus the company of our fellow man
even at work!
Sue Butler
GP and Course Organiser
Pontefract, West Yorkshire
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