challenging accepted thinking | offering solutions
David Suzuki made millions telling Canadians about The Nature of Things, starting with his show by the same name.
He mixed science with story-telling to promote everything from the environment to globalism.
His descriptions became prescriptive. He told us what is, and we inferred what ought to be. Regardless of what you think of Suzuki’s politics, his methods work.
Medicine needs its own Nature of Things. Continue reading “Nature of Medicine Ignored – Why Programs Fail”
Canadian healthcare stands paralyzed in a Robert Frost poem:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
– The Road Not Taken
Wooly-minded people pretend binary choices do not exist. They think we can choose both roads. Or they think one road will always be clearly wrong, as long as we use logic, facts and good will in choosing.
Doctors face two roads every day:
Do we do what’s best for the patient and prescribe an expensive treatment, or do we do what’s best for society and save the money for something else?
Until recently, doctors just prescribed what patients needed. Continue reading “Healthcare System vs Patients – Stewardship Part II”
Friends can speak without using words. Marketers used people sharing private looks to create a brilliant ad for Lexus. It sells cars using relationship.
Medicine starts and ends with the doctor-patient relationship.
Patients want their doctors to care most about them, not about society, or the greater good. Patients want to feel they have an exclusive relationship with their doctor; one that sees them as a unique and important.
This creates a problem:
How can doctors have exclusive, therapeutic relationships with patients and, at the same time, be stewards for the greater good?
With unlimited money, doctors can pretend to put their patient’s interests first and try to please society at the same time.
But at some point, doctors must choose: Do they do what’s best for the patient in front of them, or do they do what’s best for the community as a whole?
Medicine became loved and respected for choosing individuals. Medicine works on relationships, exclusivity and individuality. Continue reading “Relationship vs. Stewardship – Patients vs. System”