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Disservice to the most needy!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Millia Begum*
Affiliation:
NHS Lanarkshire, Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, email: millia.begum@nhs.net
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Abstract

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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2011

I would be extremely concerned that patients with the major mental illnesses under Bohmer's standard care model would be classed as needing ‘standard care’ and would be handled by non-medical professionals. Reference Abed1 To me, this is callous care and not standard care. It is a theoretically smart sounding concept, but, at a clinical level, most good clinicians would appreciate that just knowing the protocol and guidelines without knowledge of various other possibilities in the vast array of medical complexities is a dangerous practice. There is a clear difference between how a doctor diagnoses and attributes complaints to a cause compared with other professionals and these concepts are now being created only to undermine the role of a doctor in psychiatry.

What is further concerning is that the history and the future of research are never considered in these theoretical concepts. Research for these standard-care patients has come mostly from doctors who have closely worked with these patients day in and day out learning the subtleties of their presentations.

If research is to continue, doctors will have to work closely with these standard-care patients! This is a seriously concerning model to me.

References

1 Abed, RT. Custom and standard care: implications for the future role of doctors in mental health. Psychiatrist 2010; 34: 505–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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