Do Health Care Institutions Heal Us?
Yesterday as I was preparing myself for another day in the life of being a doctor, some musings around health and the human condition came to my mind. Today’s blog isn’t going to be loaded with facts and arguments, rather I just want to throw some things out there for people to consider. Did Ye Get Healed? (Click the link, I find music extremely therapeutic).
Science is wonderful and has helped us advance the human condition in innumerable ways. Can our science worship surpass human interaction in healing human illness and suffering? Is it sacrilege to science to pose this question?
Especially with the Artificial Intelligence media hype and marketing surge, this question deserves a skeptical consideration. If we can get a computer to assimilate massive data and conduct an interview with a sick person, will it be able to heal that person? Is information alone sufficient to heal a human? Will a machine touch be sufficient to supplant human doctors and nurses? Is a mimic of Mom’s Chicken soup enough to resolve a patient’s physical and emotional illness and promote a superior sense of well being and self? Can the love of preparing the soup portion be comparable to that pulled from a can and served by I -ROBOT? Let’s get down to this question; is a nonhuman algorithm attached to machinery equal to or superior to an “in the flesh”, healer?
As those who are reading my post understand, the past three decades have been that of United States health policy supporting institutionalized health care. Is the present structure of standard care order-sets, payment chasing safety and care algorithms, preferential pay and price-fixed payment control going to take over the AI conversion as well? I feel the health care system is very similar to politics. If no one shows up for the conversation, a small, select group will decide our fates. We will not be consulted in the process. But again, let’s ask ourselves, do these technocrats and administrators heal patients? Will replacing flesh and blood with AI be the answer to better care at an affordable cost? Who is offering this technology up as a solution to physician and nursing healing? Is it doctors? Is it nurses? Is it patients? I haven’t asked for this nor to my knowledge have any of my colleagues. No patients are asking for more technology and machinery to help them.
Granted, humans comprise a complex system of tissues and organs, enclosed in the largest organ- skin. But what makes us human is more than this. Enter the spiritual realm. Enter rational and emotional thought. Emotions can be explained as the brain’s interpretation of a “summation” of sensory impulses potentially augmented by a subconscious assessment of this information.
There is no scientific consensus on defining emotion. If this is true, then logically it isn’t possible for a machine to fully replicate the human condition, let alone fathom the connections required to tap into the healing that occurs from human touch, emotive sympathy and compassionate concern. The sharing of our humanity both as patient and healer is a mystical experience. Personally, I believe it to be spiritual and connects us to a higher power. Some of us have been gifted with the healing mission. All of us suffer and most will be patients. Certainly part of the human experience involves taking and receiving. This includes suffering, pleasure and pain. I don’t believe God has commissioned the computer for this assignment. Man may want to.
Agree, people need touch, love, and mother earth for healing. Modern medicine has saved some lives and orthopedics are great, but I will never be able to recover, get past, or forget what happened during Covid. I think it destroyed something really great that real science and medicine had achieved. Thank-you for your post and reminding us of the healing value of human interaction, empathy and being kind.