Objectification of people is the heritage of the professionalization of helping relationships. […] When we treat others as objects, even for benevolent reasons, we rob them of their humanity. […] Benevolence without respect is dehumanizing because it reduces the other person to an object.”
I resonated with these wise words from David Benner in Sacred Companions. I know this reality all too well as both patient and provider. It is not one person’s fault! It is not the nurse’s fault, or the doctor’s, but the way the system has coalesced over time to be a machine dedicated to efficiency and repeatable and predictable outcomes. As someone who studied quality improvement, and led these initiatives myself in the hospital setting, I am empathic to and understand the need for our checklist-based system. These systems often prevent medical errors and put safety first.
However, I cannot help but dream for more, for myself as provider, and especially for the patient. I dream of the patient not being a bag of medical diagnoses, but a human being with preferences and dislikes, a story, a family. I wish to know who they are, what’s important to them, what they want out of the care, how they want there last time to be like, and everything in between. In the race to hang the next drip, these conversations get left in the dust. It’s the difference between an urgent task and an important task. These human issues lack the urgency to push them through to boardroom decision making tables.
There are many interventions we can bring to our healthcare system to rehumanize our patients, and the patient experience (and ourselves in the process) such as increased staffing levels, a dedicated palliative care team, a chaplain available 24/7, a robust volunteer companion program and more. But until these changes come to fruition, what we have in the meantime is each other to stand beside our friends and family, to voice their needs, preferences, and desires, to hold the big picture up to anyone who passes by who will listen and to restore dignity in the guaranteed suffering of the human experience.