A letter to GPs …
I recently had reason to ask my local doctors’ practice if I could see my notes — not just the electronic version, but the handwritten too. When I received them, I sat down with my little brown packages and studied them for an hour or two.
Although I was looking for some specific facts, what my general practice notes taught me most is that a detached, respectful response to patients is just what is needed. I confess I expected to find some judgment, criticism, or callousness among the many notes and letters over my 64 years. There was no mention of my broken back being due to horse-riding-while-drunk, or my one foray into illicit drug taking ending up disastrously. Instead I found a comprehensive summary of ailments and breakages, with not a single subjective remark among them. I felt enormously relieved and grateful to a profession that can be detached enough to care just for the body at times, regardless of how much its owner has contributed to its distress, and I felt I wanted to thank you all.
There was one exception to the rule, a long time ago – a verbal telling off by a GP, not something written in the notes. However understandable and human, the power of those comments remained for a long time. Presumably nowadays doctors may take those feelings to clinical supervision or a Balint group? But that was all, in 64 years of medical attention, a pretty good record.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2012