TALES FROM A MEDICAL APPRENTICESHIP: REFLECTIONS ON SUPPORTING EMPATHY

Abstract

This article brings together and uses some tales describing experiences from my medical training to draw out a number of themes that seem relevant to person –centred health care in England. First, is the suffering and disability which doctors deal with every day in their work. Second, there is the privilege of practice, and the risk it brings of practitioners becoming immune to suffering. Third, is the complexity of health care and the effect of government efforts to sort out some of these problems, and the attempts of managers to implement new policies. The glib adoption of ‘in’ phrases, however, belies an ignorance of the complexity of patients’ problems that makes delivering person-centred care so important and sometimes so difficult. Hopefully these tales show how far things have moved towards developing care that truly centres around the person with the illness. I offer some reflections from a long journey now to argue that the task of new structures should be to support staff to do their job better, not to manage them into carrying out an entirely different administrative function.