Doctors and a lot of the medical profession have changed, care is no longer what the principles of oath intended.
Not only has care become commercialised but also more strictly technical, which is expected with the gains in technological solutions over the past few decades.
We now have two distinct groups of doctors, healers and, medical engineers. Which variant you encounter is evident in how you feel, or are made to feel.
Healers care, they pay attention to the person as much as the illness and the healing process. You feel like you matter and every interaction is one of building towards health.
Medical engineers don’t care. They care about the steps to take to perform the actions of healing, whether that is surgery, chemotherapy, or a course of medicine. It’s practical, as it should be. But it lacks the warmth of a bedside manner that allows you to be more relaxed and ease into treatment.
The feeling of being a device in for repair rather than a human being in need of healing is also not conducive to recovery, which is as much mental as physical. Positive thoughts and feelings inevitably make for better healing. One shouldn’t have to battle past indifferent or worse, uncaring, doctors to muster that.
And the attitude of the caring healer or detached engineer is one that permeates the environment and rubs off on the obsequious minions. With tests and treatments spanning two years, I can count on one hand the instances where care was taken. A radiographer who did an MRI, an anaesthetist before surgery, an oncologist’s receptionist, one or two more. The rest were neutral, mediocre, or just dismal. The surgeon’s assistant being the worst, she should book cars in for service. Or maybe a carrot harvest, but not deal with people, and certainly not ones that are experiencing life-affecting diagnoses and treatment.
But it’s easy to see why. The surgeon himself has a sausage factory going. While he has a good consulting approach and is a master at the craft of piloting a robot into your body, it’s still a sausage factory aimed at getting people into it with efficiency and speed.
Line them up and shove them in, let’s not be nice or gentle, let’s not ease them in and allow them to process and navigate this all challenging and emotional quagmire.
If only we can get some of the healer back into these medical “professionals”.