Primary Care never stops
Dec 16th, 2012 by Martin Dawes
Bounding enthusiasm
The North American Primary Care research meeting was again full of research that changes practice. Whether it was identifying the mean duration of cough, or the effectiveness of antiviral agents for flu like illnesses, the amount of clinically relevant information out of the 550 presentations was quite staggering. Just becoming aware of all this new clinical knowledge is a challenge all of us face. This is the time of year when there is just a little more time to try and read through that article I said I would read. I use a program called “Papers” to keep these but there are currently over 50 in my “to read” folder. Ah well – I will just have to pick the one’s that relate to patients seen in the last week or so.
To all those of you working over the holidays a big thank you. Emergency rooms, on call rotas for the office, deliveries, and acute hospital care all need us to give up family time. At this time of year the enthusiasm for undertaking such an incredibly important and worthwhile job sometimes may not seem enough when balanced against demands of family and friends. It always was a tension – I can just imagine Hypocrates coming back home from a house call on Cos to a dried up dinner of humus, soggy tomatoes in olive oil, and burnt lamb. His two sons would already be asleep and he had yet again missed reading them the next chapter in their favorite story of the Battle of Troy.
For over two thousand years we have been working on various types of rotas, group practices, out of hours co-operatives, urgent care centres. There is no simple solution to the call of the mother of a child with fever and cough. Maybe tele-health will mean we don’t have to leave our house in the future but for now health professionals around the world shrug their shoulders and just get on with it. There is a pride of being part of an organisation designed to look after others and there is certainly appreciation from society of all that you do especially over any holiday season.
I hope that you all have at least some time to relax, see some sunshine, have time with family and friends, and know that the work you do is appreciated by many.
Martin