Enter the dark satanic mills of mass production

More and more hospitals and health clinics are practicing something called whole person care.

If you’re like me and you read medical journals from the national institute of health for fun, you will notice that healthcare professionals are trained to practice several things.

See the person as a whole and in the context of his or her family and wider social environment.

Take continuity of responsibility for people’s care across many disease episodes over time.

Demonstrate concern for the needs of the presenting patient, but also for the wider group of patients or population.

Coordinate the patient’s care as needed across organizations within and between health and social care.

Compare that to the conventional model of medicine.

Traditionally, our healthcare professionals sought to fix problems and manage diseases. Whereas this new holistic approach seeks to help patients and optimize health.

Instead of simply finding the issue and fixing it, they’re identifying the risk and minimizing it.

As a person with zero medical training whatsoever, this approach to care is fascinating. Whole person care rooted in every good behavior that’s missing from our interactions, medical or otherwise:

Intention, empathy, curiosity, compassion, acknowledgement, acceptance and so on.

Imagine if people treated each other, and more importantly, treated themselves, from that holistic place? Imagine if we actually took the time consider each other’s full spectrum of needs?

In a world where people are valued for their performance, not for who they are; where the powers that be want us to become replaceable cogs in a senseless industrial machine, this idea of whole person care is sorely needed.

Because even if we aren’t producing something of value, we still have value. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How well are you understanding and acknowledging the nature of holistic human reality in your interactions?