I have worked in allopathic or traditional healthcare for 12 years. I have seen extraordinary, compassionate caring that touched the patient’s life and heart in uplifting and healing ways. I also have witnessed cold, detached relations with a patient and their loved ones that left them feeling helpless and without comfort. As a patient I have left more physician office visits feeling depressed about my health than I care to recall.
Healthcare can be a noble profession. However, its noble garments are pretty tattered and worn. This is the results of the imposition of an industrial model of medicine on a profession of caring for human beings. Time, volumes of patients, productivity and margins are the measures of the industrial healthcare model. Industrial measures are focused on the immediate short-term. The hearts and souls of the practitioner and the patient are left disappointed and blocked by the short-term goals of financial health.
Many have heard the mantra so popular now: “No margin, No mission.” How many times is that used as an excuse to shave a few minutes off a patient conversation or eliminate a step in a process in the name of cost?! In the quality and process improvement world it well known, and unfortunately demonstrated over and over again, that when productivity is focused on, quality goes down and costs go up.
What I want as a patient is a healing relationship with my caregivers. Not a transaction. There are many caring individuals within health systems who are compassionate in the face of an organizational quest for margin. However, it is the entire system that needs to demonstrate loving care toward me as a patient. The system needs to say we will take care of you; we will help you consider the options, and we will create a healing space for you to have hope and a sense of control over what you are facing. As a patient I want the system to enable compassion and caring.
The Fetzer Institute is dedicated to compassion in the world. Check it out. Their work should inform the work of healthcare systems and organizations.