Word: patiently
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...doctors get 17 shillings ($3.40) a year for each patient on their list, regardless of whether they call on him every day in the year or not at all. A doctor can have a maximum of 4,000 patients on his list, which would give him a gross income of $13,600. In a few regions, there are more doctors than necessary (e.g., one to each 1,000 patients along Britain's south coast). The result is that doctors' income there is low. Though Bevan could raise their fees, he refuses to do so in these cases because...
...Zealand. Parliament is also weighing compulsory health insurance that would pay half of every citizen's doctor bills from the public treasury. Doctors don't like this scheme either; they argue it will bring "a third party into the traditional intimate and confidential relationship between doctor and patient...
Whether the new treatments will prove a permanent cure remains to be seen. When arsenic was first in vogue for syphilis, a few treatments often healed the sore and temporarily made Wassermann tests negative; ten years or so later, the patient sometimes suffered from the late stages of syphilis (insanity, paralysis and heart disease). Conclusive results of this or any other penicillin routine will not be known for at least ten years...
Modern surgeons do an expert job of operating on human bodies, Drs. Lipkin and Joseph conceded, but too often they ignore human emotions. Everything would be fine if only a patient could calmly accept the idea of an operation. But patients almost never do. Most people have psychological weak spots and most surgical patients are "apprehensive, anxious people, reacting emotionally rather than rationally." They fear death (many make their wills just before an operation), pain, disfigurement, loss of function. The fears are as much a part of the patient as his gallstones or diseased appendix...
...surgeon, Critics Lipkin & Joseph think, should take time to talk-and listen-to his patient. He should tell the patient just what to expect, stress his chances of surviving the operation and getting well. Sometimes, Lipkin & Joseph charged, the doctor "tries to justify a large fee, or builds up his own importance in the patient's eyes by talking of the difficulty of the operation and how his experience and skill will be needed . . ." Unfortunately, the operation's danger is what sticks in the patient's mind...