You Will Be Seen Now

The piece is written from both GP and patient’s perspectives during a consultation; the expression of their viewpoints throughout allows for either party to face and challenge their preconceived perceptions of their counterpart. The patients’ perspective is especially founded on experiences of those I've worked with and took time to learn from, during my placement year, as well as on my own personal experiences. The GP perspective is directly founded on the previous knowledge of doctor’s experiences shared through articles, doctors I know personally, as well as a Primary Care module I’ve studied – in particular, literature we study called ‘The Appointment’ - a book conveying the thoughts and feelings of a GP during their consultations. The GP’s perspective conveys that their medical position and outlook often seems to prevent people from appreciating what is really taking place underneath – mentally and emotionally. The GP’s expressions were aided by the perspectives shared in Graham Easton’s ‘The Appointment’ - the GP expresses a desire to be seen as a person, away from the pressures and expectations that come with the GP title. Upon reflecting on the reality depicted in the book, and the reality shared through GP presentations about the nature of each day of work during my module, I was able to reflect and suggest a vented expression of the difficulties to allow readers to bring a sense of human nature to GPs despite the efficiency of their work, providing an almost ‘mechanical’ or machine-like view of them. The GP perspective was written to express primary caregivers - like GPs - aren’t machines of medical/clinical knowledge but are people that deserve to be seen as such. The patient’s perspective conveys that they often feel their clinical presentation of a possible ailment can overshadow the person they are underneath. The disease and clinical presentation can often cloud the reality of the life a person might live – something strongly expressed to me in the context of Oncology. I reflected on this and the feelings this conjured up in patients and their families and worked to depict this through the patient view emphasis. The poem ends with the appreciation of both parties’ expressions enabling their persons to be viewed away from the titles of patient and GP, and just being seen. With this poem, I wanted to bring light to the people making up in the complex dynamic of patient and doctor – not in context of their titles of ‘patient’ or ‘doctor’ but the truth: both are people before anything else. It is written to reflect the nature of medicine that can often be missed – the reminder that we are all living human beings.