20 Cooperation is strength

Father and Sons: An elderly man was worried that his sons were always quarrelling with each other. He could not get them to live in harmony. One day, he asked them to meet him with a bundle of sticks. He challenged them to break the tightly tied bundle of sticks. They could not do so. However, when he undid the rope and gave them the sticks one at a time, the sticks could be broken with ease. He advised them to remain united against the enemy. If they quarrelled and fell apart, they would be too weak to succeed in life.

Comments

Health care providers, care seeking public, the industry (diagnostic, therapeutic and insurance), media, activists and governmental machinery are the six key players in health care delivery system.

Each key player of the system is like a stick. If all of them cooperate and stand together to achieve the goal of ethical and effective health care for all, then the system will be strong and functional. If each player sets his own agenda, forgetting the common goal, then the system will be weak and dysfunctional.

Some examples of such deviations are:

Ignorant, corruptor unethical health care provider. Foolish, noncompliant or deviant behaviour by the care seeker.

64

Exploitative health care industry. Biased media that glorifies or vilifies a health care issue. An activist with a one track mind resulting in a standoffamong key players. A government that puts profits before people.

The outcome measure is not profit or high technology but quality care based on providerseeker trust. If the basic trust is undermined, as has happened in USA, the health care system will be in jeopardy and every player will ultimately be a loser. Trust is the glue that keeps the system together. Without that, it will fall apart like Humpty Dumpty and we may not be able to put it together again.

Some of Bernard Shaw's concluding remarks in his preface to 'The doctor's dilemma' are worth noting here:

 Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.  Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for.  Decide how many doctors the community needs to keep it well. Do not register more or less than this number  Of all the antisocial vested interests, the worst is vested interests in ill-health.  Nothing is more dangerous than a poor doctor.  Treat the private operator exactly as you would treat a private executioner.  Treat persons who profess to be able to cure (incurable) diseases as you treat fortune tellers.  Take utmost care to get well born and well brought up. Otherwise, you will be what most people are now: an unsound citizen of an unsound nation without sense enough to be ashamed or unhappy about it.

65

SECTION –2

CHARACTER IN HEALTH CARE

“All knowledge attains its ethical values and its human significance only by the humane sense in which it is employed. Only a good human can be a good physician.” - H Nothnagel (1841-1905).

66