Competence..... with kindness?
I’m on a bit of a ‘favourite film scenes’ roll at the moment. This post is from Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’:
A Roman centurion finds Brian painting anti-Roman graffiti in the City and berates him about his poor Latin grammar in the way that only a traditional English Latin teacher is capable of. Brian's rather poor Roman graffiti: Romani eunt domus, translates into: 'Romans they go the house'. You can see a short YouTube clip here. It is, of course, a parody of the fear-based methods of teaching in English schools over the generations. My Latin learning was done in almost exactly the same way. I remember my parents reading my Latin report: ‘Rowe will fail his Latin O-level’. Definitely not 'person-centered' teaching…..
The Latin motto of the Royal College of GPs is ‘Cum scientia caritas’ which translates as ‘Kindness with competence’. I think that we should be approaching our own work in a similar way to that of a traditional GP. We should be looking at our patients holistically and assessing them in the context of their lives and activities. Sometimes, listening to their story and having them feel understood is enough to help them heal. Indeed empathic clinicians have been shown to be more helpful to patients with chronic pain than less empathic clinicians (1).
But how do we do that? The patient encounter can be broken down into three sections:
The patient’s part
The clinicians part
The ‘shared’ part
These three sections all need to be used in order to have a successful interaction.
I vividly remember having a GP consultation a few yrs ago where the GP trashed the first part by not engaging in the first bit of a normal conversation with me ( Hi, nice to see you, how’s the family?….whatever). She went very formally straight into: ‘How can I help you today’? (The clinicians part). I felt that she was not interested in me as a person, my life, etc. It felt like she wasn't interested in 'me', she was just interested in ‘the medicine’. She evidently wanted to keep to the allotted appointment time allowance. ‘Sigh’.....
You might like to read more in Roger Neighbour’s classic book: ‘The Inner Consultation’ (2) or his more recent ‘Consulting in a Nutshell (3)
Bottom line: we need to remember to adequately address all three aspects of the consultation.
‘Cum scientia caritas’: Kindness with competence
I did actually pass my Latin O-level, by the way. So how do you say: 'Romans go home'? Romani ite domum!
I worked as a chiropractor for 38 years. I am now retired from clinical practice and no longer registered. I mentor colleagues to help them become the clinicians that they want to become. Find out more here.
