Why Should You Care?

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. – Don Marquis

Among the problems with writing is the lack of feedback. One posts, one only infrequently knows the impact of one’s sharing. It is like giving a presentation online; you talk to a screen, you may not even be able to see your audience, and there is sometimes no way of knowing whether you are being effective or not.

It is still a fair question, given the subject matter. There is a line of thinking that goes something like; these issues I have been pointing out, they are all first world problems. A bunch of overpaid doctors complaining they aren’t respected enough. Bunch of crybabies, that’s all you lot are!

For the record, I am not going for sympathy, though, as I wrote in a previous offering, I would like to think we still live in a world where sympathy is seen as a virtue. Nonetheless, the world is not a caring place very much anymore. We fill social media with vitriol and turning on the evening news can be enough to put a hungry horse off its oats. Kinder and gentler are decidedly out of fashion.

We live in a very transactional world. Even in healthcare these days, the models we hear about are mostly transactional at their core. Practitioners are not there to see you, the holistic and inclusive “you”, they are there to see the problem with which you present. The ankle bone is not connected to the knee bone in today’s practice of medicine. “Just the facts, ma’am,” no idle chatter.

Or, at least, that is what you are being fed from Governments and Departments. They like transactional medicine because it is the kind they have the best chance of providing. They might be able to find a warm body with some kind of qualifications to work at a walk in clinic that they operate (so they can say they are doing something). Trying to find you a full time Family Doctor who will come to know you and your family, your wants, desires, aspirations and goals; the things you don’t now and may never want to be part of your care. The kind of person who knows there is something wrong with you when they see you in the office chair before you say anything, and who cares enough to ask what it is that is wrong. Governments don’t want that.

The Ignatian Exercises are a series of guided meditations divised by Ignatius of Loyola. Much can and has already been said for the Exercises, but their import in this discussion comes from a simple yet important question asked near the beginning of the process; do you believe in God? If you don’t, your race is run, you have no reason to proceed any further. If you choose to believe, then you have work to do.

The “I” in the title of this SubStack is not the author (me). The “I” is you. Do you want a Family Doctor? I had hoped if you had persisted this far, the answer might inherently be yes, but perhaps a more direct approach is required.

If you have a Family Doctor, the essays I am offering are to explain why it takes weeks to get an appointment. Why the Doctor might seem frazzled or distracted when they are seeing you. Why they spend so much time looking at that screen that seems to be getting more attention than you feel you are. Why they never seem happy, or very rarely. Why they are announcing that they are closing their practice and can’ tell you what they might be doing next in their career/life.

If you don’t have a Family Doctor, these are the reasons why.

Whether you do or don’t have a Family Doctor, these essays are the reasons for your circumstance. Family Doctors already know that these are the problems. Most of all, this is what I think they want you to know about the root causes of your problems, because, with rare exception, Family Doctors are not the causes of them. The Popularity Contest types and the Government bureaucracy that supports them, they are the ones making the lives of patients and Family Doctors miserable.

You should care about these issues because they are your issues. Anyone talented enough to get into and out of medical school will be able to find something to do in this world that will allow them to pay the bills. They may burn out, but they can move on. You don’t have as many options as they do, especially when you need care. Your strength, though, the one they don’t have, is that, in numbers, the politicians and bureaucrats are scared of you. The latter need your vote, the politicians directly, the bureaucrats by proxy.

Family Doctors need these issues addressed; they need their time freed up so they can provide the care they trained to deliver to the people they want to help (you). You need these problems addressed so that they can deliver that care to you. Finally, to be honest, both you and the Family Doctors need to stop having these discussions with each other and both sides need to be cornering the folks responsible, singing from the same hymnal.