Ripples of Hope

Dr. Victoria Sweet wants doctors and nurses to go back to being doctors and nurses instead of healthcare providers. She wants them to have time to practice medicine instead of delivering healthcare. And Dr. Sweet wants all of us to understand that medicine works best when it is personal, which means the doctor and patient are happy, because they have the right diagnosis and treatment for the least amount of money.

For over 20 years, Dr. Sweet practiced medicine at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, a place she only intended to stay for two months. Laguna Honda was where people in extreme poverty with chronic or long term illnesses were sent by the county to receive care. Dr. Sweet went to Laguna Honda, so she could practice medicine part time while working to complete a Ph.D. in history. 

The focus of her Ph.D. was Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century mystic, nun and medical practitioner. Hildigard thought of the body as a plant that contained an innate ability to heal itself, which she called viriditas. Hildegard believed it was the physician’s job to remove what was in the way of the patient’s viriditas and to nurture it. As a 20th century educated and trained physician, Dr. Sweet was taught to think of the body as a machine that needed to be fixed when broken or ill, and she was the repair person.  

At Laguna Honda, Dr. Sweet practiced what she calls “slow medicine,” which involved time to examine and get to know her patients in an effort to get the right diagnosis and treatment. Her treatment plans included removing what was in the way of her patient’s ability to heal. Often there were many things in the way, including too many prescriptions, lack of rest, addiction, food insecurity, and not feeling like anyone actually cared about them. Time was one of the most important tools the doctors and nurses at Laguna Honda had. They had time to get to know their patients, treat them and nurture their hope for a better life. 

System In Distress

The amount of time doctors and nurses spend treating patients has decreased, while the amount of time they spend filling out administrative paperwork and electronic health records has increased. There was a time when a patient’s health records told the story of their diagnoses and treatments. Today, it seems electronic health records are about harvesting a patient’s data that can then be sold. I’m guessing that is what happened to me after my mastectomy when I started receiving a steady stream of emails and texts for burial insurance and metastatic breast cancer drugs. Dr. Sweet estimates that there are 1,100 for profit electronic health record companies in the U.S. none of whom talk to each other. 

Increasingly, private equity firms and for-profit companies are influencing our healthcare, and they are in it to make money. Doctors and nurses, who were already under a lot of strain before the pandemic, are leaving. As I worked on this post, 15,000 nurses in Minnesota voted to strike in an effort to put “patients before profits.” Our healthcare system is in distress. Dr. Sweet calls it the depersonalization of medicine while a friend who is a retired cardiologist calls it the corporatization of medicine.

I consumed a lot of healthcare in the last year. I have great doctors, and I am grateful for the care I received. However, at a majority of my visits, I spent more time waiting to see my doctor than I did being examined. And during those appointments, my doctor spent more time entering data into a laptop than examining me. I probably spent as much time on the phone with my health system’s billing department and my health insurer’s customer service as I did at doctor appointments.

I read both of Dr. Sweet’s books, God’s Hotel and Slow Medicine, and they filled me with hope. I wanted Dr. Sweet to tell me that things were changing in healthcare for the better, but she didn’t. Instead she encouraged me to think about what might be in the way of doctors and nurses making medicine personal for their patients. It is easy to lose hope about the current state of healthcare. But through her writing, speaking and teaching, and along with many others, Dr. Sweet is sending out ripples of hope for healthcare that takes time and is personal. That is something we all deserve!

Learn More

To learn more about Dr. Sweet’s work and purchase copies of her books, God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine and Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing please visit VictoriaSweet.com