Heroes Not Zombies

The Little Prince knew his rose from all the other roses. The truth is that uniqueness is at the core of the cosmos. Throughout evolution there has been a clear direction of travel…towards greater complexity, diversity and uniqueness.

This day has never been around before, and it won’t be around any time ever again. The Classical Philosophers knew that when they taught to embrace today as a first, but also a last. They knew that today is unique, that every single experience you have today will be unique.

Montaigne, in his essay, “On experience”, describes how hard it was for him to find a cure for his kidney stones, concluding that we are all different, and that certain habits of eating and living in some cultures are deemed harmful in others, and that, ultimately, Nature knows best what’s good or bad for any individual.

Iain McGilchrist describes how our left hemisphere narrows our focus, homing in on what’s familiar, what’s typical and what’s general, while our right hemisphere, attending to patterns and connections, allows us to see the singular and the unique.

In health care we should hold this knowledge at the core. We need to start with this individual, unique patient, today, choose the best known, most likely treatment to help them, then follow up to see how it’s worked out for them. Because no treatments produce the same outcomes for everyone, no matter whether a drug is branded “evidence based” or not. Only this individual, unique patient can tell you if the treatment is helping them.

Human beings are not machine like, and health care shouldn’t be factory like. Because every patient is unique and every doctor, nurse and therapist is unique. We need a system built on the value of keeping uniqueness at the core.