A Socialised Medical Service
1933 1933 1930s 21 pages patient under all circumstances. Clearly, therefore, the State Service must be a full-time one and free to all who care to take advantage of it. 3. — HOSPITALS ARE ESSENTIAL Most operations are best performed in hospital and many medical cases are better treated an...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
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London : The Socialist Medical Association
1933
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/C507B4B5-FB35-4C0D-A28A-DCC375C7EC2E http://hdl.handle.net/10796/BD220B3A-0F6A-4BD7-8976-4F82ADDA831D |
| Summary: | 1933
1933
1930s
21 pages
patient under all circumstances. Clearly, therefore, the State Service must be a full-time one and free to all who care to take advantage of it. 3. — HOSPITALS ARE ESSENTIAL Most operations are best performed in hospital and many medical cases are better treated and nursed there. Sufficient hospital accommodation is also essential for maternity cases, and for mental and infectious diseases. There are in addition a large number of cases which are much more satisfactorily elucidated when the patient can be under constant observation in hospital and when the services of specialists and special apparatus are readily available for diagnosis or treatment. For all such purposes hospital accommodation must be provided since it will be paid for by public funds to which all must contribute. 4. — THE TEAM MUST BE THE UNIT It must be evident to all, such is the complexity of medical science, that no one doctor, however clever he may be, can know all there is to be known about prevention, diagnosis and treatment of all diseases. In the medical service of the future a team and not the individual doctor must be the unit. The medical profession has suffered enormously in the past from "insulation." The doctor who works alone in competition with and in opposition to other doctors is very liable to deteriorate professionally. This is not only because, if a busy man, he has little time for study, but also, and perhaps more largely, because of the conditions of his work. He has earned the confidence and respect of his patients who rightly regard his word as law. They look upon him almost as infallible and it is all too easy for him to regard himself in the same favourable light. He knows little or nothing of what other doctors are doing, and, therefore, fails to realise his own insufficiency. Everything, therefore, that brings doctors together to talk over their cases, as they are sure to do if opportunity offers, is to be encouraged. The doctor is by nature a gregarious animal who gets on well with his colleagues and the experience of the hospitals shows that if economic competition is eliminated co-operation is easy and natural. What is lacking in our health services to-day is above all else organisation and co-operation. 5. — A CHOICE OF HOME DOCTOR IS POSSIBLE UNDER A STATE SERVICE It is important not to under-estimate the psychological value of confidence. It is necessary to remember, however, that an institution or service can command confidence as much as an individual doctor, as is shown by the readiness of patients to submit themselves to operation or medical treatment in certain 5
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