28/08/2026
Healthcare isn't just about finding the right pill to take for whatever it is you're feeling today. A lot of it is about understanding yourself, your body, how your body and mind behaves in various environments. And that's an intuitive process which requires time and knowledge and that's what drives us to the Doctor, when we don't understand our body and we're in too much pain to process what's going on. And every individual has a different threshold. Otherwise, how do some people end up in A&E with reflux thinking it's a heart attack, and others die at home thinking they've got reflux. We don't all experience the same and some of that is perceptual and introceptive.
There's a tolerance and a threshold to what our minds and bodies put us through that each individual is wired to cope with in different ways.
Healthcare should focus more on the development of helping individuals learn what their mind and body is doing and less on jumping straight to intervention.
Every patient I see is a unique individual, experiencing their mind and body in their own way. Diagnosis doesn't always matter, it's how you cope with it that does. Obviously diagnosis is required, but often following diagnosis and treatment a patient can be left shell shocked and afraid wondering what just happened and why.
Think about the individual, how they're coping, and what's going on for them!
PS, picture of me, age 17, first caring job, working in a nursing home, serving bedtime drinks, and seeing how happy a smile, chat and a hot cocoa made these old people!
