Deconstructing Harry, a film directed by Woody Allen
From time to time I like to reread the first chapters of the Martín Zurro Family Medicine Book. Review the excellent reviews of Borrell, Gené, Casajunana, de la Revilla and many others. I try to seek inspiration and encouragement, guidance and light when the confusion or complexity I face in my clinic overwhelms me. There are days or weeks when I sail the seas of uncertainty, as Juan Gérvas would say, with sufficient dignity but in others I shipwreck when the swell of my ignorance, the shortcomings of the system or the great pressure of an unbearable number of complex patients overflow me.
In those moments of dizziness with vegetative courtship I look at myself and our Primary Care and I see us out of focus. We are still there, we are still functioning, but out of focus. I hear complaints from patients, managers, co-workers... everyone realises that we are blurred. The wise men launch plans and white papers, the ministry convenes meetings, the scientific societies do not stop scheduling congresses but nobody manages to focus the situation properly.
In the meantime we all express discomfort by shooting each other: managers, different professionals, professional colleges, unions and associations, but no one looks at himself with enough conscience, will and courage to focus. It is easier to expect others to adapt to our distortion that we understand is the fault of external factors outside our sphere of competence.
It is very uncomfortable to live out of focus, many end up like Woody Allen in "Deconstructing Harry" stuffing himself with pills, going to the psychotherapist or sunk in neurosis. Others burn slowly in smoking piles that announce everywhere the slow death of a Primary Care that nobody knows how to reanimate.
The healing question would be how to refocus Primary Care? And we will not find the answer in the Martín Zurro. Among other things because the theorists of the specialty did not foresee the possibility of a generalized blur like the one we live in, in which a great majority of the teams have become survival groups, the number of overloaded health centers is very high and the proportion of burned doctors is overwhelming.
The system does not contemplate audits to control the quality of teamwork, nor corrective measures of the unbearable welfare pressure, nor does it provide measures to manage staff motivation, among other factors. Competences that perhaps should be exercised by the numerous managerial cadres blocked in an eternal rumination of databases and indicators that prevent them from going out to help, guide and motivate their fatigued and unfocused fellow caregivers.
It is not my intention to point out a single responsibility in this blur, in fact my thesis is the same as that of the cinematographic fragment that accompanies these letters: the world is not going to adapt to our distortion, it is up to us to clarify ourselves.
In order to do so, we will have to reread the classics but also ask for help. Look closely at those health centres that have managed to work as a team, ask the managers to intervene in those that have been overtaken, and start generalised processes of reflection and awareness that can serve to restart those teams that, like so many blocked computers, have been "hanged".
Faced with the storm of lack of resources, age increase and bio-psycho-social complexity, it is essential that the seamen wake up and coordinate to avoid a posible sinking if everyone continues to withdraw to a corner to cry in the most delicate moment of navigation with typhoons of social uncertainty, surrounded by privatizing icebergs and with the sail permanently trimmed.
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