Care and Managed Care: Psychological Factors Relevant to Healthcare and its Delivery

Abstract

What is the essence of clinical caring, how can its value be determined, and what are its origins? Caring for a patient is a bit like loving someone. In both cases, the wellbeing of the person who is loved or the patient who is cared for is felt to be overridingly important. Good clinical care goes beyond the diagnostic services, prescriptions or operations that the patient is billed for. It includes services done free of charge for the satisfaction of easing the patients' distress or enhancing their sense of security or optimism while they cope with illness. Love and clinical caring are not commodities to which a market value has relevance. They have value without price. Whereas a person in the business of selling services is motivated by the prospect of making a profit, the altruistic clinician is motivated by the desire to help the patient. He or she is paid to be sustained, albeit comfortably, not to be made rich.