Keith Brofsky/AFP
By
Hazel Speed
The words of Sir Thomas More that our Souls are beyond monetary value is oddly, and sadly, not quantifiable with modern medical equipment to measure a soul akin taking to monitoring a person’s blood pressure, or any more than a liar’s tongue is incapable of being held to stop their lies.
Physicians – heal thyselves, at least morally!
The General Practitioners bleat they are working all the hours possible already without being forced to work longer surgery hours or being accessible on weekends.
All of a sudden they are suggesting that if germ-ridden money was to be put before them then perhaps they could oblige after all, purely to free up the system for others less able to pay, which would help across the board, you realise, purely altruistic we are told.
How kind.
Already there are those who say this would create a two tiered system and patients with no funding available would still probably be denied the removal of a harmless wart, etc, which once, not many years back, would have been removed anyway for a number of valid reasons both medically and to ease the mental or emotional effect on the patient.
Would GPs still turn down any similar minor surgery request of their proposed paying patients – after all, they would be paying just for ‘an appointment’ not what is now termed ‘elective’ surgery?
If GPs can suddenly find time to see patients in evening and weekend surgeries IF paid, then why can’t they do so under existing proposals put by The Prime Minister?
Imagine a scenario where a person ‘signing on’ for unemployment benefit made a suggestion at the Unemployment Office, e.g. sorry, I can’t work on the days you wish, that is unless you pay me extra!
On a personal note I am grateful that presently my own GP is caring and professionally knowledgeable about medicine and social issues of their patients and is working extra time if their patients need same and that is under current rules.
Perhaps GPs who are now seeking their own form of Brexit are in the wrong profession? If one has been bestowed with medical abilities, aptitude and expertise plus dedicated training combining as a ‘vocation’, then their soul is part of the deal whether it appears outwardly or not, and thereby an inference that some may not have one.
Patients are a precious commodity but are not part of the Commodities Market.
In my lifetime I have been privileged to benefit from the medical expertise and caring of some GPs whom I respected and still do, likewise various wonderful hospital specialists. Others, however, left me feeling that I knew more and cared more than any of them and perhaps were better qualified to practice medicine ‘there and then’ without training.
One time, an excellent Specialist told me what his own Father had told him (his Father was also a Specialist)…..If you only ever remember one thing that I have told you, it is this – “If you can’t help a patient, then don’t hinder.” By this he meant by word, deed, action or inaction. What a wise man and I am sure he will be proud of his equally wise Son.
The NHS has a clue in the initials thereof The ‘National’ Health Service, a Service owned by the people for the people and paid for by the people.
GPs would do well to remember that fact and examine their own consciences – another thing that cannot be measured. If it could, perhaps not only would there not be as many GPs or Specialists as the numbers listed in registers infer, there probably would not be as many politicians or clerics et al either.
To demand payment in the way some GPs desire with their recent proposal, is a form of ransom at best, and corruption at worst. People will die as they did in the Victorian era and beyond.
Taking two paracetamols at bed-time will not salve the stains of moral guilt, nor will they invoke the Sleep of The Just!
Hazel Speed
Photo (c) Hazel Speed – used by kind permision to Tuck Magazine
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