All you need is love .. and medicine
All you need is love.” Lennon/McCartney 1967
What do people want aside from food, money and shelter? Good health. Human connection. And being loved is part of that.
In the context of health care, patients rank relationships with their doctors as the top characteristic of quality of care.
Three factors most cited as critical to their healthcare experiences are having a doctor who listens, who is caring and compassionate, and who explains things well. When people are asked about their healthcare experiences, they speak about the quality of the connection and interaction between them and their clinicians.
Yet we do not incentivise the time required to build a strong human connection – the average primary care visit lasts under 10 minutes. Kindness can be forgotten in the blur of work, more patients than you can handle, and irritating admin tasks using clunky computer systems.
Older adults rank remaining independence and relief from pain and symptoms ahead of living longer. We also do not incentivise continuity in clinical relationships that are required to achieve that.
Our failure to address the social factors influencing health is strikingly visible in the disparate impact of COVID-19 on non-white people, older adults, and those living in poverty.
If the purpose of the healthcare system is to improve the overall well-being of society, part of the NHS’s budget (£180 billion per year) could be redirected to facilitate human connection. Interaction time with doctors needs to lengthen to improve that doctor/patient connection. And when combined with a reduction in poverty, safe housing, and easy access to healthy food and social care, this will benefit us all.
The disconnect between the root (social and political) causes of ill health and our healthcare spending joins climate change, pandemic infection, and political paralysis as the major threats to longevity and quality of life. And part of the ‘treatment’ for that is a bit more time (and love) in our interactions. Medicine and doctors should be leading that effort, demonstrating how an improvement of human connection in our society can be made.
