‘Patient’ is not a title. It is an attitude

I have said this a million times, if I have said it once – the three crimes committed on society with society’s blessing are: Commercialization of Health Care, School Education, and Justice.

I am writing this after reading a LinkedIn post by a GP who said that he was fired because he took too long to listen to a patient. In his case a patient suffering from mental illness who must have HUGELY benefited because the doctor listened to him patiently. But the Manager of the practice fired him because he took too long. That is why I am writing this to show that we still appreciate those who have not allowed their humanity to be killed by business considerations.

The amazing thing is that this is the opposite of how it used to be in my own lifetime. Let me tell you a true story which my father who was a GP and General Surgeon (Yes, they existed in those days) told me about himself.

He was in Madras Medical College in 1953 and they were having an exam where the examiner was going to observe them while they treated patients. He said that there was a ward full of patients who he had seen the previous evening on his rounds. So he knew every one of them and their case histories well enough to write those down from memory. (He had a prodigious memory).

Come next morning, he is doing his round with the examiner in tow. He came to a patient who was given to be being rather long winded and highly repetitive when talking about his symptoms. My father had not only seen him the previous evening but since the man had been there for a couple of days, he had seen him and listened to his story several times. That morning, he was stressed with the examiner shadowing him, he had heard the man’s story several times, and so he was a little impatient with listening to him for the Nth time. The examiner failed him. When he told the examiner the reason for his impatience, the examiner told him, ‘Your first task is to comfort the patient so that he feels he has been understood. If that takes doing it twice a day everyday, then that it how long it takes. Impatience has no place in patient care.’

My father said that he thanked the examiner and told me that it was the most valuable lesson that he had ever learned. “Your first task is to comfort the patient so that he feels he has been understood.”