Despite all the challenges that we, and every other nation, faces with their health care systems, it’s worth remembering that in the broader picture we really have progressed in leaps and bounds over the last several decades. How easy is it to forget that only 100 years ago the average life expectancy was in the 20s to 40s in most parts of the world (just as it was for nearly all of human history). The simplest of infections could easily kill you, there were no vaccines, and the most natural act of childbirth was a highly dangerous and precarious process for any mother to go through.
Today, we take for granted that all of our health care interactions will be safe and successful, and that’s also a testament to how high we’ve set our standards. In the modern and technologically advanced system that we work in, with cutting edge medications and treatments, the other side of the coin is that it’s also easily forgotten that health care is still very much about human beings and real people.
If there’s one common thread that links everyone who has ever needed medical attention, from those first cavemen to our current generation, it’s just that. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said over two millennia ago: “It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.”
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