A Consultant Family Physician, Dr Oluwajimi Sodipo, on Tuesday urged healthcare practitioners in the country to practise humaneness in their clinical practices to improve patients outcomes, including quality of life.
Sodipo, who works at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on health practitioners attitude.
According to him, it has become necessary as worldwide, medical practice has moved toward patient-centered care, a component of humaneness.
“So, in practising humaneness in medicine, everything that is being done has to be about the patient and not the practitioner.
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“Also, there has to be some kind of reciprocity of respect; the practitioners are providing the services, the patients are trying to access that service and pay for it.
“So, there is a mutual respect that everybody is playing a role.
“There is a need for practitioners to show empathy now that we are having more chronic illnesses like cancers, diabetes, hypertension; many of these illnesses are long term.
“These illnesses need a holistic approach; practitioners need to show empathy and understanding to the patient which will actually change a lot and affect the patients quality of life,’’ he said.
“In practising humaneness in medicine, we are looking holistically at the patient’s outcome in terms of the medical, psychological and spiritual outcomes.
“Overall, just trying to improve the quality of life for whatever illness the patient has and to allow that patient to have an illness experience he or she can get the best out of,” Sodipo said.
The consultant, however, said that there were some factors militating against the practice of patient-centered care in the country’s health sector.
According to him, these factors have resulted in an increase in litigation and dissatisfied care by the people, including patients who access the sector.
“In one hand, we have an increasing exodus of healthcare practitioners; so, there is a chronic shortage and it is getting worse every year.
“On the other hand, we have an increased awareness of patients of international best standards; what the patients feel they should get when they visit the hospital, and there is a mismatch of that.
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“Worsening also is the changing medical school; most healthcare practitioners were trained in what we call bio-medical care, that is, healthcare practitioners-centred,” Shodipo said.
He called on patients to also support healthcare practitioners and reaching agreements that would better their outcomes.
Shodipo said: “Patients also have certain expectations most times and because we are in a multicultural society, a number of times, people want to bring in their experiences into their illnesses.
“Many times, when a patient is ill, they feel prayers only can solve the problem; prayer can form part of the treatment, but most times it may not be enough.
“When you apply spirituality in medicine, you get better outcomes in terms of survival rates, quality of life of the patient’s experience of the illness.”