less than an ideal method of care

A man cut his hand and went round to his neighbour for help. The neighbour happened to be a doctor, but it was not the Doctor but his 3-year old daughter who opened the door. Seeing that he was hurt and bleeding she took him in, pressed her handkerchief over his wound, and reclined him, feet up, in the nearest chair. She stroked his hand, and told him about her marigolds, and then about her frogs, and, after sometime starting to tell him about her father-when he eventually appeared. He quickly turned the neighbour into a patient, and then into a bleeding biohazard, and then dispatched him to hospital for ‘suturing’ (The neighbour had no idea what this was). He waited 3 hours in Casualty, had 2 desultory stitches, and one interview with a medical student who suggested a tetanus vaccination (to which he was allergic as it turned out). He returned to his doctor next door the next day a few days later, praising his young carer, but not the doctor (who turned him into a patient), nor the hospital (who turned him into an item on a convenor belt), nor the student (who turned him into a question mark; does a 50-year old man with a full series of tetanus vaccinations need a booster at the time of injury?)

It was the 3 year old who was his true nurse-and-physician and universal health worker, who took him on his own terms, cared for him, and gave him time and dignity.
Question her instinct for care as you will: point out that it could have led to harm, and is inadequate for scientific medicine, and that the hospital was just a victim of its own success. But remember that the story shows that there is, as T S Eliot said, at best, only a limited value in the knowledge derived from experience… the child had the understanding and natural compassion that we all too easily lose amid the science, the knowledge, and our stainless steel universe of organised health-care.



(From Oxford hand book of Clinical medicine)