Putting the ‘care’ back in healthcare

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The word “healing” has epistemological roots in the term “wholeness.” And yet, healthcare systems often fail to see the wholeness of their patients. They view bodies as machines to be mended, without accounting for the complexity of patients’ lived experiences.

For Dr. Anoop Kumar, this is a big gap in the healthcare system. He’s an emergency physician and alumnus of the International Master’s for Health Leadership at McGill University.

“If you have a healthcare system that doesn’t know what wholeness is, then its understanding of the person is incomplete,” he said.

That means any treatment prescribed by the system is also incomplete.

Indeed, healthcare reformists often focus on issues like family doctor access and emergency wait times. But Kumar highlights an equally important goal: reorienting healthcare towards wholeness.

Seeing the whole patient

It’s difficult to define wholeness in concrete terms, said Kumar. It’s an almost spiritual concept: an acknowledgement that people are more than the sum of their physiological parts.

Indeed, humans are made up of cells, electrons, and neurons, organised into a functioning body. Understanding how these parts work—and how to mend them—is a fundamental part of medical training. But to view the body in this way is to view it as a machine, and misses the emotional needs of the person who must live with that body every day.

This can have real health consequences. If a patient requires physiotherapy but has depression, will they be motivated to do their exercises every day? If a doctor prescribes antibiotics after a 15-minute consult, will the patient trust the diagnosis enough to take it as prescribed?

Health and wholeness are inseparable for Kumar. Through this lens, the question is about more than treating a physical ailment. It’s also about understanding the patient and aligning all areas of their life towards healing.

Mind your (bedside) manners

Wholeness, emotions, care – these are not new ideas, said Kumar. Medical schools have long taught the basics of bedside manner to help improve patient experience and build rapport. But even so, this part of medicine is often treated as secondary to treating physical needs.

“We tend to believe that rapport is kind of ‘soft,’” he said. “And anatomy—that’s the hard stuff, the real stuff, that’s the stuff that’s measurable.”

This attitude gets in the way of wholeness, he said. It encourages a machine view of the body and neglects everything else.

For Kumar, this is a missed opportunity for healthcare providers. Treating wholeness may seem like a burden on an already maxed-out system. But he argues that, through the lens of wholeness, healthcare systems can build a different kind of capacity.

“The question is, how much can we help people heal and become independent?” he said.

When you view patients as whole, you can gently suggest actions for them to do on their own time that fit with their lives–whether that’s exercise, nutrition, rest, or other health choices. And they’ll find the capacity to do that, said Kumar.

“When I’m recognising someone’s capacity, I’m recognising their power,” he said. “When we start doing that, things change, and opportunities come up.”

The Cleveland Clinic has taken steps in this direction, for example. They now offer integrative medicine services to support all aspects of human healing – not just the ailment with which the patient initially presented.

“It’s in the early stages,” said Kumar. “But it’s possible, and it’s happening.”

Want to learn more? Dr. Kumar delves deeper on the McGill Delve podcast. He shares his personal relationship to wholeness, his experience as an emergency department physician, and how all medical practitioners can incorporate wholeness into their lives. Search “McGill Delve” on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you download podcasts.