Today I had a conversation with a colleague who is a Consultant in International Health Care Delivery. We spoke about medicine, women and the world today. We talked about psychosocial medicine, where medicine fails, and where it succeeds. Medicine has become a series of protocols and guidelines, distracting away from the patient. The ancients knew more than we give them credit for.
As Sir William Osler (1849 – 1919) said ‘A good physician treats the disease, a great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
As more women come into medicine, there maybe a chance to develop a more holistic approach. As opposed to the silo model of multiple specialities dividing patients up between them and where no one communicates with anyone. Not least because women love to talk!
A holistic approach means that the physician looks all aspects of the patient, including etc. The danger of focusing too much attention on symptoms and details is that care becomes expensive, duplicates efforts and doesn’t get the root of the problem.
Maybe women with a more pragmatic, intuitive and empathic approach can begin to steer medicine back on course.