- Within the public sector, express medical consultations are becoming more and more frequent.
- Due to the saturation in the waiting rooms, the time allocated to each patient is minimal.
- A humanistic service must focus on the patient and not on the disease.
One situation that doctors face in their professional lives is patient care. It’s about the most basic aspect of the profession and what you prepare for during college. To make a difference with respect to your colleagues, the ideal is to offer a humanistic medical consultation. Now the question is whether it can really be done based on the characteristics of the current Mexican health system.
Throughout the academic part you received the basic knowledge to become a health professional. From that point the challenges and demands begin but it is hardly a minimum aspect of what is faced in the labor field. Although one of the points that are not usually mentioned but is essential to know is the one related to the duration of a medical consultation. It is a fairly complex issue for which there is no definitive answer.
The first thing you should keep in mind is that you will never receive two identical patients. Even if people arrive with the same symptoms of a disease, personal characteristics make a difference between each one. From age, weight, history, allergies and other aspects are essential.
On the other hand, it is also necessary to consider that there are differences between the various health systems. The public sphere is characterized by long lines of waiting patients and this generates a feeling of hopelessness and constant stress. Although you want to offer a detailed service to each person, it is necessary to take into account that there are many outside who want to come to the office.
The correct length of a query
The consequence of the above is the so-called express medical consultation which has become popular in recent years. The solution to serve as many patients as possible in an eight-hour day is to allocate a minimum amount of time to each one.
While in private hospitals the situation is different. The number of patients who attend is small and that allows a greater amount of time to be allocated to each one. Even the atmosphere is usually more relaxed and that prevents doctors from suffering from the Burnout syndrome Although no one is safe.
Similarly, there are also pharmacy offices that are becoming more and more popular. In 2020 alone, this service modality served 17.4 million people. One of its virtues is that they are distributed throughout the national territory and this prevents large crowds from being generated in the waiting room.
Adequate medical service
Regardless of the industry, what all patients wish to receive is a humanistic medical consultation. With this, the service should focus on the person and not on the disease. It is necessary to pay attention to all the details to get a comprehensive service.
Similarly, it is necessary to stop seeing patients as file numbers and see them as people. Something as simple as calling each other by her first name is helpful in building a personal relationship. In the end, these kinds of details are what make the difference between doctors.
But now it is necessary to return to the central question of the article. When you have a large number of patients waiting and can only allocate 10 minutes (or less) to each one, can you really offer a humanistic medical consultation?
The answer is quite complex. This is a problem that is becoming more and more evident in our country. The number of doctors does not increase in the same proportion as the number of patients. For the same reason, it is necessary to seek a substantive solution because otherwise both parties will be harmed.