A few months ago, a patient I’ve known for years came to see me. I immediately knew something was wrong, and before she’d even sat down she told me that her daughter had died earlier that week in a car accident.
She stood there, motionless, weeping. I care deeply about this woman and I was devastated for her.
There were no words I could offer her to make her feel better — literally nothing that I could say.
I put my arm round her and, before I knew it, she’d flung her arm over my shoulder and was crying uncontrollably.
There were no words I could offer her to make her feel better — literally nothing that I could say. I put my arm round her and, before I knew it, she’d flung her arm over my shoulder and was crying uncontrollably
What should I have done? Pushed her away? Told her that it was not appropriate to touch me? Of course not, because it was perfectly appropriate.
When we see another human being in distress, it’s only natural to comfort them. It doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor or a dustman, the instinct to touch and console is overwhelming.
Yet, this week, doctors were urged not to hug patients in case they complain. We must be ‘firm’ in refusing to embrace them. The Medical Defence Union, a body that defends doctors against legal claims, said doctors should instead offer to shake the patient’s hand.
Have they lost the plot? ‘Oh, your daughter’s just died, let me shake you by the hand.’
These people have no idea what it’s really like on the coalface.
But the whole thing makes me feel desperate for what is happening to the medical profession and how we’re being made to feel scared of our own shadows. Of course, I’m not going to go round hugging all my patients, but I’d like to credit myself with the ability to judge a situation.
There have been many other times when I’ve hugged patients or held their hands. It’s not uncommon when I discharge patients for them to become emotional and hug me. They’ve often been very ill and close to death, and yet here they are now, well and healthy and being discharged.
That’s an incredibly emotional experience for lots of reasons.
Rebuffing a hug and shaking someone’s hand in this sort of situation would actually be incredibly rude and damaging. You’ve seen this person at their most vulnerable — and yet when it comes to it, you don’t even want to touch them? That’s not right.
I think if you treat a patient like a human being, you can’t go far wrong. One of the reasons his patients gave for nominating Professor Mike Dixon for the Daily Mail’s Health Hero awards was that he ‘gives wonderful hugs’. Good for him!
There have been many other times when I’ve hugged patients or held their hands
A consultant in geriatrics I once worked for used to hug lots of his patients — very often after having to break bad news such as a terminal cancer diagnosis.
I asked him about this, and he replied that many of his patients hadn’t been touched in a caring way for months or even years, and that this was a tragedy.
Not everyone has family or friends, he said; some people have no one. ‘When you’re told you’re going to die, you need to feel for a moment that you are not alone — giving someone a hug is the best way to show them that,’ he told me.
Yet over the years we’ve become increasingly wary of human contact. And I fear that the rise of the #MeToo movement and the hideous actions of a few are making us all twitchy about our innocent actions being misconstrued. This week, there was also new guidance on how doctors and midwives should address women in labour. Some of it was sensible — don’t use confusing acronyms when speaking to the patient, for example. And don’t talk about them as if they aren’t there.
Fair enough. Though if you need to be told this, then really you shouldn’t be caring for patients.
But other advice was to avoid using terms such as ‘good girl’ to encourage women. Sure, it might be a bit patronising, but it’s about context. People sometimes call me a boy — and providing it’s said in the right circumstances, I’m delighted! Surely we can leave it to the doctors and nurses to judge a situation and the patient.
Increasingly, medics aren’t treated as human beings, but automatons to be tightly controlled; more evidence of the contempt those in charge have for those on the ground. It also means patients aren’t treated like human beings either.
Despite intense efforts, a cure for dementia remains elusive — but now there’s a drug to help treat some of the most distressing aspects of the disease.
The drug, pimavanserin, helps stop the terrifying hallucinations and paranoid thoughts that occur in about half of cases. Often it’s this aspect of the illness that’s most upsetting for the patient and their loved ones.
Until now, the only treatment was antipsychotics, which carry an increased risk of stroke and falls. It’s an agonising decision: do you treat the paranoia but risk harming the patient, or leave them in distress? The new drug changes all that.
How our phones make us dumber
Should children be made to learn their times tables? This debate has been raging this week, with teachers and teaching unions rubbishing the Government’s plans to make children do more rote learning.
Then there was the humiliating interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain in which Schools Minister Nick Gibb refused to answer questions on times tables.
Ah ha! Clearly the policy must be rubbish, as the minister himself doesn’t even know his times tables, everyone laughed.
Well, I don’t find it a laughing matter, because, to my great shame, I still don’t really know my times tables.
It’s a lasting legacy of my mediocre primary school, where, in the Eighties, the hippy head didn’t like the idea of children being made to learn.
Instead, we did projects that would last for weeks on daft topics such as ‘ties’. The idea was that school should be about ‘exploring’. Rubbish. All it achieved was woefully to prepare me for secondary school.
While as an 11-year-old, not having to do proper maths classes was great, it also meant I never learned the basic language of mathematics — and I’ve struggled ever since.
At secondary school, I was put in the bottom stream for maths and it took me years to catch up. Even now, despite having studied statistics at degree level, it’s still a weakness because I lack key foundations such as times tables. And it’s embarrassing struggling to do even basic arithmetic without a calculator.
But there are other reasons why rote learning is important. When, one summer, I worked in a particularly bleak nursing home, I set myself the task of memorising a poem each day. I still remember them now — and if ever I’m having a difficult time, I have those words of wisdom at hand to remind me that I’m not alone.
Many people will say that in the age of mobile phones — with their calendars, address books and reminders — there is no point in memorising things. Psychologists call this ‘cognitive offloading’.
But what’s interesting is that when we rely on phones and the internet for complex things, research shows we end up relying on them for simple things, too.
And this is making us dumber: it can stop us thinking for ourselves. There’s evidence that we’re also losing our focus and attention, so our memory is suffering too.
So, yes, it’s boring having to memorise times tables — but it teaches the brain how to retain and manipulate information. And that is precisely what we should be teaching in our schools.
Even I put off seeing my GP about a lump
About a year ago, I noticed a strange mark on my cheek. It was no bigger than a grain of rice and very faint, yet I worried about it because I have a family history of skin cancer.
I should get that checked out, I thought to myself; I’ll make an appointment to see the doctor tomorrow. Days turned into weeks, but I did nothing.
Every time I looked in the mirror, I’d convince myself it was getting bigger. I must get it checked out. Tomorrow.
Reader, it took me six months before I saw a GP, who immediately referred me to a dermatologist. Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing, but why did I wait? If it had been cancer, six months could have been the difference between sitting here writing this and not being here at all. This is a classic example of ‘Fear of Finding Out’. In research published this week, nearly two-thirds of people reported they’d consider delaying making a GP appointment for fear of being told they have a serious illness.
Denial is a form of defence mechanism — a strategy the mind uses to cope with difficult situations. Humour is another, allowing us, in an unthreatening way, to talk about things.
But unlike humour, denial doesn’t help us deal with a problem. What surprises me is that despite denial first being identified more than 100 years ago, we’re only just realising its impact on patients delaying treatment.
Given the effect this has on health, it’s something that we should all be more aware of.