The “care” in healthcare: from efficient processing to human responsiveness

Abstract

The industrialisation of healthcare has transformed the expectation of individualised and compassionate caring for patients into the reality of efficient and standardised processing of people to achieve organisational goals. In this way, healthcare functions like a machine that processes patients via protocols and technologies. Though this standardisation is necessary for enhancing safe and efficient operations, it can also alienate organisations and their clinicians from their core mission, turning care into a transactional endeavour. Consequently, patients must adapt to the system’s needs and work to achieve its goals, adding unnecessary burden and limiting the benefits of their healing endeavour. In this opinion piece, the authors offer an alternative vision of care as the work of people who, in interaction, notice and respond to each patient’s problematic human situation. Healthcare organisations must reclaim this care as its core mission, and foster environments where patients and clinicians may engage in this adaptative and responsive practice. By doing so, healthcare can fulfil its purpose: to care for all in a way that is careful and kind.