Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, seeing the impact on healthcare staff it is timely to consider the future of medicine, and how we support future doctors and adapt our systems to allow them to thrive. It is hard to make predictions in complex health systems but the work undertaken by Health Education England (HEE) in the Future Doctor Programme1 and pandemic experience highlight the importance of the human side of medicine: doctors’ relationship with patients and others in the team; their confidence in managing complex comorbidity as the norm; and their desire to address health inequalities and the health of populations, as well as that of individuals. Four themes from the Future Doctor Programme are fundamental to this human element. HEE’s work showed that most doctors value personal relationships with patients above all. This applies across all healthcare settings including mainly research-based doctors. Personal interactions enable doctors to absorb innumerable details about individual patients. This allows them to choose the best options for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, or support. It stimulates ‘questioning’ for research, shapes medicine, and develops clinical expertise, allowing experienced clinicians to rapidly assimilate verbal and non-verbal information to produce seemingly intuitive diagnoses. During COVID-19 we saw the vital importance of human relationships, and human contact, to us all. Doctors want to be able to express empathy and compassion through a human connection with their patients and to treat them holistically, not just treat their disease. The benefit of investing time to think holistically is known. One long consultation, or many over the years, enable GPs to develop relationships and practise holistically despite seriously constrained time limits. Our target-driven NHS culture often impedes this. Patients also place great weight on the patient–doctor relationship, enabling trust and ensuring they have the best care as individuals. As they navigate the …
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