‘Did my dad die because someone didn’t follow policy, didn’t pay attention or, was the outcome inevitable?’ ‘Might my mum have survived the operation if she had a different surgeon or she was at a different hospital?’
Nevertheless, within the dark underbelly of medicine, where geriatricians live, there are some quite stunning effects often, from stopping and sometimes starting medicines.
They aren’t diseases or malfunctioning organs, they aren’t flow or machinations of the system; they are universes unto themselves and those who love them.
The concept of a ‘reassurance scan’ is particularly treacherous, for often, odd abnormalities are discovered – with such frequency in medicine that they even have their own name… ‘Incidentalomas’
We, the homeostatic organisms that have evolved over the past four billion years, exist in a state of serenity when well, but things can be thrown out of kilter by disease.
What could be better – working within science and the metaphysical, the harmonious synchronicity of mindful being and state-of-the-art clinical science?
The point, as is often the case, is my aversion to patients. Or rather, the existential construct that relates to the ‘patient state’ = they who suffer; with the principal goal of my life being to obviate suffering, my objective is to really stop people turning into patients.
And that is the role of the interceptors.