Does medicine need humanity?

Does medicine need humanity?

Whether a bird is born good or bad,

It's still destined to fly.

It's not going to happen to a man,

It is not enough to be born a Human Being

You have to become one.

Eduard Asadov


Instead of an introduction

This article is a cry from the heart. It is addressed to all doctors, pharmacists, healthcare professionals and, of course, patients. Because all these people are united by the high title of Human Being.

Of course the heart doesn't cry. It is a figurative expression. The cry of the heart is expressed in a pinching feeling somewhere in the solar plexus. Everyone has felt it when they have done wrong or witnessed an inhumane act. 

This article is my inside view. I have been working in pharmacy for over 20 years, working closely with doctors and patients. It is very close to me. 

The mission of a doctor

There is no doubt that every doctor chose his or her profession out of the purest and brightest of motives – to help people, to treat and cure them, to relieve pain and severe conditions. It could not be otherwise. It is not an easy profession, either physically or psychologically. The learning process is long and incredibly demanding! If you want to become a good specialist doctor, be prepared to study for 8 years or more!

Consumer "pliers"

After going through all these difficulties and obtaining his diploma, the young, cheerful doctor, full of hope for an interesting and useful job for society, finds himself in a private clinic. He is faced with strange and unpleasant circumstances. Under pressure from management, he is forced to prescribe unnecessarily expensive examinations, add unnecessary supplements to the prescription to please the pharmaceutical companies, take more patients in less time and so on. Gradually and not explicitly, they make it clear to him that he is needed here to make money and help others to make money. 

I often hear: 

"What's wrong with making money? Have we studied so much for nothing?"

There is nothing wrong at all, on the contrary, I think that a doctor should be very well paid! So well that he should never have to bargain with his conscience! The work of any healthcare professional should be paid decently, because our lives and health often depend on these people, on their professionalism. And that is our shared responsibility.

Let's try to imagine a society in which doctors and other health care professionals receive consistently high salaries. And their wage rate will not depend on the number of operations performed or treatments prescribed. The only factor that can be rewarded monetarily is an increase in the health of the population.


Quote about what a healthcare professionals should be in a Creative Society


The hard and exhausting work will be left behind, the work week will be reduced to 4 days a week, 4 hours a day! And the rest of the time medical professionals will be doing what they love to do: relaxing with their families, traveling, and, finally, pursuit of science! The medicine of the future focuses on disease prevention. And that will require the participation of every doctor. It is new developments, new scientific discoveries, and participation in increasing the level of knowledge about health and prevention among the population through the media: TV programs, magazines, Internet resources, etc. This is the kind of change the Creative Society format offers us. And this is just the beginning. We will talk about other prospects of the creative society and what medicine in the creative society will be like in future articles, but for now, let's think together, 

How to break the vicious circle?

The unexpected news is that we are responsible for our world, for the conditions we are living in. Yes, yes, we have created this world, the consumerist society. We have turned values upside down; now everything is not about human Life, as it should be, but about money. I often thought that it didn't concern me. But if you honestly look at yourself from the outside, you realize that you've done your part. Somewhere by keeping silent, somewhere by remaining indifferent, somewhere by supporting trendy consumerist stereotypes.

Together we are uprooting the conscience, honor, morality, and humanity of the younger generation. It's bad for everyone.

Even because of single cases of dishonest treatment, the rest of the medical community suffers from the distrust and disrespect of patients.

We ourselves have brought into fashion the principle "no cheating – no earning" and have built a system of consumerist society on it. It's all around us. Nobody wins. Wherever you go: to the market, to a car repair shop, to a tailor, to a lawyer, you will come up with people just like you, raised on the same principles.

But if society is made up of people, individuals, and the format of society is the result of our common efforts, then this is great news: it is in our hands to change the format! Every person in his or her place, no matter who he or she is, no matter where he or she is, can already act now.

First, you have to learn to see the people around you! Not an impersonal client, not a patient, not a source of income, but a Human. And act solely in good faith, from that position. From my own experience, I will share that the first time was not easy. Thoughts resented and screamed: " You can't make any money that way! What are you going to feed the kids with? Look at the car he (a patient) arrived in, let's give him a more expensive treatment".

But if you step over these thoughts, turn away from them, and act as a human being, you immediately feel warm and happy. It gives a certain degree of inner freedom and new understandings. Then interesting discoveries happen: the number of patients grows, work improves contrary to expectations, open trusting relationships with patients are established, regular clients appear. Most importantly, work brings joy! You do what you love, and other people benefit from it. The main thing is just to do your job and not to wait for the result. "Do what you have to do, and let be what is going to be”. Thus, in small steps, we will build wonderful human relationships.

Each person has a Soul and a Personality – his spiritual components; the power of attention through which he can create and be creative. That is the beauty of every person: he or she is capable of changing so much, both in himself and in the world as a whole. This is the difference between a human being and an "intelligent animal."

At the international online conference on December 20, 2020, "The Creative Society. Together We Can" read a historical letter from a school principal who, in addressing his teachers, spoke of having gone through a concentration camp and seeing highly trained doctors performing experiments on living people, nurses killing babies, excellent engineers making gas chambers for prisoners. Being smart, educated, and a good specialist is not enough to become a Human Being. It is very important to teach children to love people. A good heart, honesty, compassion, the desire to help others – this is what humanity is based on. And we can bring up the highest moral qualities in children. And we ourselves can become an example of a real Human Being.

A very happy fact is that there are actually a lot of good doctors, honest doctors, who aim to help people. Deep gratitude to all of them from the bottom of my heart. After all, there are many of us, we must unite, stop being silent, not close our eyes to the consumerist attitude towards health and life of people, stop being shy!

The Creative Society

The small steps mentioned in the previous paragraph are very important. It is inspiring that we can take a giant step in this direction to change the format of the whole society from a consumerist to a creative one.


In the Creative Society, we should be socially protected. ALLATRA Vesti


The point of the creative society, as I understand it, is to restore to each inhabitant of our planet the right not only to be called human, but also to be a Human Being.

The right to be honest, sincere, the right to do what we love, and, at the same time, the right to be as useful to society as possible. The right to be protected economically from inflation, from miserable wages, from miserable old age; to be protected from wars. It turns out that this is not at all difficult to be accomplished. To change the priority in society, and again put the main value – Human Life – back in the first place.

By changing the format of society from a consumerist society to a creative one, we make the conditions for kindness, humanity and mutual assistance to flourish throughout the world!



Julia, participant of “ALLATRA” IPM


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