Rapidly moving forward .... to the past

Bombay Hospital Motto

"A patient is the most important person in our Hospital. He is not an interruption to our work; he is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our Hospital; he is a part of it. We re not doing him a favour by serving him, he is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so"

I hear you saying …..This brilliant mission statement must have been written by a communications guru... maybe it was designed through a focus group that spent weeks considering the words to get it right …aided by of course the necessary expensive management consultant skilled in marketing.

NOPE ... this was written by Mahatma Gandhi in the mid twentieth century

Who said new ideas are best?

After 35 years working in the National Health Service I came across this wonderful motto that I think should be displayed in every office of every healthcare establishment in the world.

Sometimes it seems to me that processes of healthcare organisations and issues of accountability make us overlook that our reason for working in healthcare - whether a finance clerk or a surgeon - is that the patient must always be central to our thinking.

Let's get our thinking focused totally on the needs of the patient and then worry about everything else.

That feels better ... it is good to have an early morning rant!