I'm watching 'Sicko' for the first time

Dear America,

O_O

I -- WHAT. I mean, I knew it was a ridiculous system, but not that ridiculous.

(I didn't know Hillary Clinton had been pushing for universal healthcare during her husband's presidency. Good on her. And I think I need to reread the details of the recent changes more carefully.)

Also, that British doctor they interviewed was adorable <3 Adorable and loaded. I WANT A JOB IN LONDON AND A HOUSE IN GREENWICH.

...actually, I want to get my British citizenship renewed and then work in France and be a SUPERHERO NINJA DOCTOR in a zippy car who drives around Paris at night.

More seriously -- I think this was a good time for me to watch this documentary, manipulative though it is. I've been feeling kind of demotivated and apathetic as far as my course is concerned, and I think it's because my last couple of placements have involved a lot less talking-to-patients. Patients are awesome. (Mostly.) And getting someone's life story is always rewarding: you realise how much of an impact sickness can have on a person, or a family, and you realise how resilient people are. It's humbling. I'm in the right profession, I am, I just sometimes get so snowed under by the paperwork and the assessments and the constant stress that I forget this fact.

So, um, huzzah for socialised healthcare.


Love,

an abnormally patriotic-feeling British-Australian.

following on from my last post

There's a question I'd like to pose to you all, and that question is this:

What do you want from your doctor?

I know a lot of people who have had bad experiences because they're queer, or overweight, or trans, or have a disability. I know a lot of people who have had bad experiences because they weren't listened to or weren't taken seriously, or because the doctor walked into the consultation with certain assumptions or communicated poorly with them.

I'm not really talking about the healthcare system as a whole, more about doctors as people and the one-on-one relationship they have with patients, both in primary care settings and in hospitals. I don't want to turn into the doctor people blog about because their experience was degrading or insulting or unhelpful or embarrassing. And as the daughter of a surgeon and a GP, someone who's never gone to a doctor herself except for basic things like stress somatisation and vaccinations (and even then, armed with a fairly thorough medical knowledge), and as a healthy white cissexual upper-middle-class person who's still struggling to recognise and own her privilege, I know I haven't had the same experiences that a lot of other people have.

I want to know what to look for when observing others in my profession for the remainder of my degreee. I want to know: what should I become? What shouldn't I become?

(Mental health is definitely included in this; it's a particular area of interest and concern of mine, and I think it's poorly understood and poorly approached by a lot of medical professionals.)

Feel free to link this post, if you like. The more opinions & anecdotes (good or bad) I get, the better.