tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5366621735995057721.post8382938233651166671..comments2024-03-17T09:17:01.454+00:00Comments on Vic the Vicar!: Retreating into a communications vacuum - a valuable lesson learned!Vic Van Den Berghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09581156515370131898noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5366621735995057721.post-21340152227603821302015-09-24T12:54:21.307+01:002015-09-24T12:54:21.307+01:00No, don't shut up!
This is all good stuff and...No, don't shut up!<br /><br />This is all good stuff and helps with the conversations that we need to have with others and with ourselves.<br /><br />Thanks,<br /><br />VVic Van Den Berghhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09581156515370131898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5366621735995057721.post-80751876391245641502015-09-24T12:46:45.793+01:002015-09-24T12:46:45.793+01:00(Part 2.)
Finally, I also recognise your point ab...(Part 2.)<br /><br />Finally, I also recognise your point about phoning people. My wife has long conversations by text, that could have been dealt with in a two-minute phone call. For me, at the end of a morning surgery, where I will inevitably have run late, I will have a long list of queries to deal with. Here, it is the opposite - Many of them would benefit from a phone call, but the trouble is I can deal with ten queries in our notes system in the time it would take to make one phone call. But sometimes, I either have an unexpected spare moment, or it is something that I really cannot deal with by messages, and I make the call. It is usually far more rewarding than messages via receptionists for both my patient and myself, but again the way NHS management wants to get us using IT is very much a "never mind the quality feel the width" approach to medicine.<br /><br />Edzard Ernst was professor of Alternative Medicine and Exeter Medical School. Having had some training in homeopathy at his German Medical School, he was initially quite open about the effects of some alternative medical therapies, but careful research led him to see most as placebos. So why, he wrote, given all of the evidence that homeopathy achieves no more than a placebo effect, do patients rate the treatments so highly? His answer was that consulting a homeopath involves a long consultation with a sympathetic therapist who makes the patient feel that their concerns are being taken seriously.And I know that all of the technology that the NHS wants to introduce into the NHS will achieve only negative things if it takes away from that consultation with a sympathetic therapist.<br /><br />I have rambled rather off-topic: I shall shut up!JonGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5366621735995057721.post-53258424569605323072015-09-24T12:45:57.298+01:002015-09-24T12:45:57.298+01:00I am working backwards through your recent posts. ...I am working backwards through your recent posts. For the second time today, I am struck by the parallels between your calling and my role as a GP. Indeed, it used to be said that many of the things that prompt people to attend their GP are things that a generation or two earlier would have taken to their parish priest (and, some of us would say, the priest probably had far more useful help to offer.) Nevertheless, many of us have found that aspect immensely rewarding. When I was a medical student, I was offered some wise advice by my Minister. He predicted, correctly that we would be warned not to let ourselves get too emotionally involved, as he had been in his training. But he pointed out that, although this would protect us from the drain of the difficult things we would have to deal with, it would also mean that we could not properly share in the good things. I am sure that he was right.<br /><br />But from what you write, there are also parallels between how our roles are being changed. General Practice particularly is facing immense change both managerially and technically, imposed from on high with little apparent thought given to the consequences for the doctor-patient relationship. Because this is a fragile, tenuous thing that is almost impossible to realistically measure, it tends to be left out of cost-benefit calculations.<br /><br />I chuckled when you used the phrase "people not processes". One of the things that I especially complain about is their lip-service to what they call the "patient experience" when in reality they focus on Pathways, Protocols and Procedures. I keep trying to get through to them that they are missing out the most important P - the Patient.<br /><br />And how much lip service occurs in modern management? I confess that I know little about it, so was interested to read about Peters and Mayo. But how much does management really apply this. How much of what is done is an ersatz version, designed, deliberately or otherwise, to give just the illusion of management involvement with the workforce/ Perhaps it is just that the patients who come to me are going to be the ones with poor managers.<br /><br />But there are parallels there with politicians, who are very keen to give an illusion of involvement. But the real attitude usually shows through fairly quickly - Andrew Lansley was sacked as Health Minister not for trying to push through a massively unpopular set of reforms to the NHS, but because he failed to present those reforms in a positive enough light. I would say that he was sacked for having failed to polish a turd sufficiently, but that is so -ften the political attitude, not to look at Why something is unpopular, but to try and dress it up to make it Look more attractive than it really is.JonGnoreply@blogger.com