Human wisdom as a source of hope

[摘要] This time last year I suggested that we needed a mundane revolution — a better awareness of primary health care’s effect in and on the world that would go hand-in-hand with a change for the better.1This year I would like to suggest that we need to recognise the ‘embodied’ or ‘peopled’ nature of primary health care in the UK and abroad — patients, practitioners, and policymakers are complex ‘storied’ beings. I have argued that ‘they’ are also ‘us’ — and to forget this is to accept the commodification and even demonisation of humanity.2 This is especially important as things have not really improved in the UK or the world over the last year, with a war on the borders of Europe, and manifold crises of poverty in the UK. Many of the existential threats to humanity have been inadequately addressed if at all. We need to understand and value ourselves and each other to have a chance at flourishing as a profession or indeed as a species.EMPATHY FOR THE WHOLE PERSON What is it about us as individuals that allows us to thrive in primary health care? Emilie Couchman reflects that we have many demanding, rewarding, and sometimes competing roles. It is unreasonable to expect that someone can completely fragment themselves and cease (for example) to be a parent while being a GP, or to expect that each and every role has a ring-fenced store of ‘Va-va-voom’!3 Nada Khan renders visible some of the overlooked aspects of part-time clinical practice — the time spent away from the consultation is often both worthwhile and tiring!4Perhaps ‘fragments’ of role and identity can help us to see more of the whole person, and to respond humanely. Jeremy Howick and colleagues embrace the diversity of individuals who consult and who work in health care as the route to better empathy. We need to try harder with people who we recognise to be different from us — this goes both for colleagues and patients. Howick et al remind us that this can be both a moral and an empirical awareness. Empathy, they argue, can not only lead to better health outcomes but it is also arguably a morally desirable virtue in and of itself.5 They also point to the socioeconomic homogeneity of the medical profession as a barrier to empathy, and, as if to prove this point, Hannah Milton highlights the positive effect of female pioneers in the medical profession in her review of Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine.

[学科分类] 卫生学