The Golden Rule
Whether you’re a veteran in search of physical, emotional, and spiritual help
or someone whose role is to care for them,
you’ll find guidance and great wisdom in these words of Jesus uttered two thousand years ago:
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7:12
The Golden Rule
Taking care of veterans The God Way is about physicians, psychologists, medical, and non-medical providers treating veterans the way you and I like to be treated.
This is how Jesus’ words:
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets
look like in real life to all of us physicians and medical providers:
listening to our patients with minimum interruptions, caring, encouraging, and affirming a veteran’s aspirations and dreams.
It’s about taking time to offer patients during their medical visit all the available resources, guidance, and instructions that will help them get the help they need to change their lives for the better.
It’s also about every veteran treating his/her medical and non-medical providers with the respect, kindness, and acceptance he or she would like to be treated with.
That’s the way we all desire to be treated.
And that’s the way we often forget or choose not to treat others.
Truly, inner healing for our veterans won’t begin to happen without genuine love and compassion. Excellent medical care without heartfelt 
caring, and compassion won’t produce long lasting healing, but only temporary fixes that won’t last.
But given the profit and money driven model of America’s health care system where large hospital systems employ most of America’s doctors, and given the many challenges, trials and tribulations of the VA System, how are we to take excellent and compassionate care of America’s veterans, and society’s sick ones?
The answer to providing the best care possible for our veterans is not found in more VA legislation.
It’s not found in the excessive PR attempts of pleasing those few who can’t be pleased.
It’s not found in spending resources to over empower the relatively very few but vocally loud veterans who might be taking advantage of the overly generous VA system.
Nor it’s found in securing a bigger budget from congress, apart from the funds needed to urgently acquire and retain more doctors, medical providers, and nurses.
Friend, the best, surest, and quickest way to take good care of America’s veterans is to tap into the already abundant resources that the VA System has been blessed with: compassionate and caring Primary Care doctors, mid level providers, nurses, medical clerks, pharmacists, psychologists, social workers, and specialists who practice excellently and care deeply about the veterans entrusted to them.
If President, Congress, Senators, VA Committees, high level administrators, and veterans would realize the valuable treasure and gold mine of the multitude of excellent, caring, and compassionate medical providers that the VA system is already blessed with, veterans’ care would drastically change for the better.
It makes a lot of common sense and wisdom, not just for the VA system, but for America’s health system as a whole to take good care of those who take good care of America’s physical and mental health.
Another way of saying this : Take great care of those whom you will need to take great care of you, your family, and nation in your sickness and during the dark nights of your soul.
Nurturing, empowering, encouraging, and giving ample, uninterrupted time to medical providers to help them deliver excellent and compassionate care to veterans is wise and makes a lot of sense. It’s common sense.
To the Ultra expensive and profit- driven American Health System this might make sense but won’t make a lot of dollars. Our American Medical Health System is a very profitable Wall Street driven model that provides jobs and help to many but primarily aims to generate wealth and dividends to few on top of the corporate ladder and a handful of investors. Medicine in America has transformed from its original mission of delivering excellent medical care with compassion so as to make society’s ill, lost, last and least healthier and internally richer. Medicine’s new mission, as led by financial giants, is to deliver excellent “efficient” medical care for the purpose of making a lot of money to few groups and investors. “It’s all about the numbers” as many providers have come to realize.
But given this paradigm shift, what’s the overall effect of such a shift on the health of individuals and of America?
Are Americans healthier and better off today; body, mind, and spirit given the great technological advancement in medical care, and the astronomical cost of medical care?
Here are the findings of an extensive report by The Commonwealth Fund, June 2014 :
“The United States health care system is the most expensive in the world, but this report and prior editions consistently show the U.S. underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. Among the 11 nations studied in this report—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions of Mirror, Mirror. Most troubling, the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the U.S. is last or near last on dimensions of access, efficiency, and equity…”
Citation: K. Davis, K. Stremikis, C. Schoen, and D. Squires, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, 2014 Update: How the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally, The Commonwealth Fund, June 2014 .
Please read my next blog posting about how the Golden Rule can heal the sickness of our American Health System, and help veterans find excellence, genuine care and compassion in their inner battle and journey of healing.
Advice and recommendations offered here are not meant to replace your medical provider’s individual evaluation, diagnosis and treatment. Please see your medical provider for any physical or emotional concerns.
Views expressed here are only of the author, and do not represent the views of any other organization or entity.
Adel Gobran Hanna, M.D.
Author: Soldier to Soldier, Heart to Heart
A Doctor’s Stories from a Military Camp
Blog: www.adelhanna.com
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