Remote, quick, impersonal, call centre medicine is not general practice. It may work for a subset of patient queries, for minor ailments, but for the rest, understanding the patient’s needs, perspectives and priorities as well as the context in which they live is fundamental for providing safe, person-centred care.
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In the current COVID-19 pandemic, many (including world ‘leaders’) have been tempted to abandon the ideas of evidence based medicine of needing clinical trials to justify the use of treatments. This is a mistake.
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The effect of being stopped and searched by the police can be psychologically traumatic and leave one feeling scared, powerless and humiliated. I thought about my patients. A lot of patients I look after are black and I wondered about how negative interactions with police could affect their psychological health and wellbeing.
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COVID-19 has all but ensured that primary care will never quite be the same. This includes the way in which we care for our nursing and care homes. It is important that we take the positives from the virtual ward round that was forced upon us, and adapt our practice in the future so that we can continue providing the best healthcare possible for our patients.
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The terrible direct and indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our elders living in care homes demands our attention and clinical scrutiny. We must continue to scrutinise the effectiveness of virtual assessment of our older patients with thorough clinical governance processes. These are the people with the most complex comorbidities, prevalent polypharmacy and disguised diagnoses.
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