Missing: Humanity in Healthcare
For an industry that could not be more reflective of the nuances and complexities of humanity, there sure is a lot of dehumanization that happens in the healthcare system.
It seems like nobody is exempt from this dehumanization:
Patients: “The fracture in room 310”. “The hip replacement in 504”.
Patients’ family members: “The wife”. “The son”.
Colleagues: “That social worker…you know, the tall once”. “Physio girl” (which yes, I was actually addressed as by a nursing colleague on a few occasions).
Until very recently, I hadn’t considered another group of people who experience this dehumanization - healthcare leaders.
They way we healthcare workers think of our managers, practice leads and upper management (or at least the way I’ve come to realize that I’ve thought of them) reminds me of the way many of us thought about our teachers when we were kids.
We never pictured them hanging out with their friends, or taking their kids to sports or having a bad day. They were just those people who stood in front of the class, rain or shine, who had to deal with all of us kids. We never really thought of them as people with lives outside of the school.
Now I’m not saying that healthcare workers aren’t consciously aware that their managers and practice leads are people. But I think that under the intensity of our working environments, we forget that they too are stressed, they too have family stuff going on, they also wish they didn’t have to go to work sometimes and at times, they also wish that they had more support.
This past summer, I interviewed several leaders in healthcare and I was so humbled by what they shared with me. I have so much more compassion for their experiences than I did before I started these interviews.
Whether or not I agreed with some of my past leaders’ methods or decisions, I feel bad for the many times that I didn’t truly see them as just people. And for that, I apologize.
I believe that it’s time for us to bring more humanity back into healthcare. Don’t you?
