I recently decided to sign up for the paid services of a Personal Trainer at the fitness center I use so that I could strengthen neglected parts of my body.
I ended up with a competent man who could only be called an Impersonal Trainer. Like so many people I encounter in the health field, he had no "people skills." He never called me by name or tried to assess my overall ability to do some of the stretches he proposed. And he seemed to be in a hurry. His first comment to me, in the way of personal conversation, concerned how busy he was that week.
And when I saw him later, he didn't bother to ask how I was doing with the new program he had demonstrated because he apparently didn't remember me.
Why do such people enter the healthcare professions? They are knowledgeable and probably do good work but have no training in what used to be called "the bedside manner." Many seem to dislike working with people! Luckily, my family doctor and dentist not only refer to me by name but look at me, listen, and talk with me without any sense of rush. They are the models of how medical practitioners should be, but they are the exception.
Most of the technical aides and other doctors I encounter prefer to look at their charts or computer versions of my profile rather than at me. They rarely call me by name; if they do, they make minimal eye contact. They do not pay enough attention to me to treat me as a person.
You might excuse this as shyness, yet there is no excuse for poor manners. You might say everyone is overworked, with never enough time to devote to the person being treated. Yet, in the highly personal area of healthcare, when one must learn about and treat another's body, an awareness of the sensitivity of such a situation should call up some measure of respect--or at least simulated caring.
Rushing is, for me, a sign of disrespect: it tells me that the other person's "agenda" is much more important than I am, and it adds to the anxiety involved in any medical visit--even for personal training at a gym. Am I not worth slowing down for--even for a few minutes? Does the money I am spending not warrant some real attention?
I cannot, unfortunately, tell the Impersonal Trainer I met that he is incompetent or complain to his superiors since he is otherwise knowledgeable and well-trained. The session we had was useful.
But, like so many others in his profession, he does not know that anyone in the healing professions should do more than provide information: they care about people. That should be, in a perfect world, the reason therapists, nurses, trainers, and doctors enter the medical field.
But this is not a perfect world. I just don't like being reminded how imperfect it is quite so often.
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Public Selfishness
I recently wrote about a young man using his cell phone, loudly, while exercising in the fitness center near me, a place where some awareness of other people should be taken for granted. This guy ignored the needs of others to satisfy his own desire to have a long, private conversation in a public place.
It does not take much imagination to apply this selfishness to the rancor over public policy, especially in the health care debate. Sometimes a simple word like "selfishness" sums up the underlying attitude of those who say, "I have health care and I don't feel responsible for those who don't."
In what many insist is a "Christian nation" that also happens to be the richest on the planet, 45,000 Americans die each year because they lack access to health care. Fifty-million of our fellow citizens lack health insurance and must rely on emergency rooms if they want to avoid dying in case of a medical crisis.
Arguments about health care can and have been made about government intrusion and expanding government control, and many disagree with the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare. Some feel strongly that they are being forced to purchase a product against their will. I can understand this point of view because I, too, value individual freedom.
But, as I have earlier stated, individual freedom without concern for the common good, for the whole of society of which each of us is a part, is a very limited view of the issues involved. Most people do not see, or want to see, what all major religions teach: that individual freedoms must always be balanced against the needs of others.
Greg Garrett recently made this point, using the Gospels as evidence (his book is Faithful Citizenship). He quotes Martin Luther King, on the last night of his life: faithful citizenship requires a "dangerous unselfishness."
King learned the hard way how dangerous his cause was; so did Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who stood up to Hitler and was executed.
President Obama has often addressed the importance of the common good, often to deaf ears. In his latest State of the Union address, he asked us to imagine what our country would be like if it were founded NOT on absolute concern for individual freedoms but on concern for everyone. This perspective, which has so much in common with the Judaeo-Christian tradition of social justice based on the common good, is often overlooked or misinterpreted as a kind of government dictatorship ("socialism").
Obama and his people must do more to explain how the ACA (health care act) helps rather than harms us as a people. He must continue to invoke Lincoln and others who spoke of the better angels of our nature, which tell us that it may be easier and more comfortable and more logical to act in our own interest, but we are all part of something greater than ourselves. It is called America.
In the 1820s, Alexis de Tocqueville was worried that the extreme individualism of the new American democracy might sap "the virtues of public life." Since then the debate has raged between those who insist that public policy must guarantee the voters' self-interest and those who uphold the legal and moral obligation each citizen has to help his neighbor.
As a recent debate in the New York Times letters column indicates, we in America have become conditioned to think politically in terms of "me" whereas democracy requires that we recognize that we are all in this together.
As Paul L. Nevins writes, what J. K. Galbraith observed fifty years ago--the existence of "private affluence and public squalor"--has grown worse. And the inability of politicians to address this social injustice is leading us deeper and deeper into a malaise: selfishness is, whether we want to admit it or not, the cause of America's political and economic problems.
It does not take much imagination to apply this selfishness to the rancor over public policy, especially in the health care debate. Sometimes a simple word like "selfishness" sums up the underlying attitude of those who say, "I have health care and I don't feel responsible for those who don't."
In what many insist is a "Christian nation" that also happens to be the richest on the planet, 45,000 Americans die each year because they lack access to health care. Fifty-million of our fellow citizens lack health insurance and must rely on emergency rooms if they want to avoid dying in case of a medical crisis.
Arguments about health care can and have been made about government intrusion and expanding government control, and many disagree with the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare. Some feel strongly that they are being forced to purchase a product against their will. I can understand this point of view because I, too, value individual freedom.
But, as I have earlier stated, individual freedom without concern for the common good, for the whole of society of which each of us is a part, is a very limited view of the issues involved. Most people do not see, or want to see, what all major religions teach: that individual freedoms must always be balanced against the needs of others.
Greg Garrett recently made this point, using the Gospels as evidence (his book is Faithful Citizenship). He quotes Martin Luther King, on the last night of his life: faithful citizenship requires a "dangerous unselfishness."
King learned the hard way how dangerous his cause was; so did Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who stood up to Hitler and was executed.
President Obama has often addressed the importance of the common good, often to deaf ears. In his latest State of the Union address, he asked us to imagine what our country would be like if it were founded NOT on absolute concern for individual freedoms but on concern for everyone. This perspective, which has so much in common with the Judaeo-Christian tradition of social justice based on the common good, is often overlooked or misinterpreted as a kind of government dictatorship ("socialism").
Obama and his people must do more to explain how the ACA (health care act) helps rather than harms us as a people. He must continue to invoke Lincoln and others who spoke of the better angels of our nature, which tell us that it may be easier and more comfortable and more logical to act in our own interest, but we are all part of something greater than ourselves. It is called America.
In the 1820s, Alexis de Tocqueville was worried that the extreme individualism of the new American democracy might sap "the virtues of public life." Since then the debate has raged between those who insist that public policy must guarantee the voters' self-interest and those who uphold the legal and moral obligation each citizen has to help his neighbor.
As a recent debate in the New York Times letters column indicates, we in America have become conditioned to think politically in terms of "me" whereas democracy requires that we recognize that we are all in this together.
As Paul L. Nevins writes, what J. K. Galbraith observed fifty years ago--the existence of "private affluence and public squalor"--has grown worse. And the inability of politicians to address this social injustice is leading us deeper and deeper into a malaise: selfishness is, whether we want to admit it or not, the cause of America's political and economic problems.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
No Man (or Woman) is an Island
John Donne wrote the famous words, "No man is an island, entire of itself..." We are all, he said, involved when the bell tolls for one individual; each death touches us because we are involved in mankind. (Meditation XVII)
This is not a sentimental bit of poetry from the early 1600s; he truly believed in the greater good, the unity of believers of which he was a part known as Christendom.
Our multicultural world has replaced Western Christendom, but the idea that we are all in this together, in the same boat, as the cliche has it, remains valid. Obama has spoken of this many times, yet no amount of speeches will convince some people to examine their radical individualism, which I see as a great social evil.
Although I hate to bring up the health care debate, it provides a salient example: nearly every day, I encounter a posting or letter to the editor which says, in effect, "I have good health insurance and I don't want to hear any more about government brainwashing." Or "socialism." They resent a health-care plan for everyone because they don't want to be reminded of their obligation to be part of a whole greater than their own individual world.
There may be many valid objections to Obamacare; what concerns me is the dismissal of the moral obligation to care for those whose lack of insurance costs us all in the end, financially as well as morally.
The conservative political agenda seems to be all about the individual, his or her rights and freedoms, which are guaranteed by the Constitution; but as Robert Bellah and others have long noted, respect for individual rights must be balanced by a concern for the common good. The whole (nation) is only as strong as its parts (citizens).
"A man alone is in bad company," Jacques Cousteau once said: this is not a religious sentiment. The isolated individual, cut off from family and community, lacking love in the broad sense in which Dante meant it when he connected love and justice in his Comedy, is prone to do evil: consider the loners out there and the violence that we often learn about too late. Read the powerful novel by Russell Banks, Affliction to see how male violence in particular destroys.
Life is not all about me, as our consumer culture keeps preaching; it's about us. Is it too late for our diverse, multicultural society to re-learn this essential lesson?
This is not a sentimental bit of poetry from the early 1600s; he truly believed in the greater good, the unity of believers of which he was a part known as Christendom.
Our multicultural world has replaced Western Christendom, but the idea that we are all in this together, in the same boat, as the cliche has it, remains valid. Obama has spoken of this many times, yet no amount of speeches will convince some people to examine their radical individualism, which I see as a great social evil.
Although I hate to bring up the health care debate, it provides a salient example: nearly every day, I encounter a posting or letter to the editor which says, in effect, "I have good health insurance and I don't want to hear any more about government brainwashing." Or "socialism." They resent a health-care plan for everyone because they don't want to be reminded of their obligation to be part of a whole greater than their own individual world.
There may be many valid objections to Obamacare; what concerns me is the dismissal of the moral obligation to care for those whose lack of insurance costs us all in the end, financially as well as morally.
The conservative political agenda seems to be all about the individual, his or her rights and freedoms, which are guaranteed by the Constitution; but as Robert Bellah and others have long noted, respect for individual rights must be balanced by a concern for the common good. The whole (nation) is only as strong as its parts (citizens).
"A man alone is in bad company," Jacques Cousteau once said: this is not a religious sentiment. The isolated individual, cut off from family and community, lacking love in the broad sense in which Dante meant it when he connected love and justice in his Comedy, is prone to do evil: consider the loners out there and the violence that we often learn about too late. Read the powerful novel by Russell Banks, Affliction to see how male violence in particular destroys.
Life is not all about me, as our consumer culture keeps preaching; it's about us. Is it too late for our diverse, multicultural society to re-learn this essential lesson?
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