Pope Francis will receive this Saturday, May 25, 2024, the promoters of the “Thank you, Doctor!” campaign. (ThanksDoctor.org), a global initiative that seeks to value the humanizing role that the primary doctor, also known as a family doctor, plays in the health system and in society.
The initiative, which was launched on November 16, 2023, in the Vatican, has received the support of some of the most representative medical associations, as well as civil society institutions, already counting on the support of more than one million people.
The campaign arose at the initiative of the non-profit medical association SOMOS Community Care, of New York, in collaboration with the Pontifical Academy for Life, an institution of the Holy See that brings together academics for their knowledge and professional excellence, without discrimination of geographical or religious origin.
The European Union of General and Family Physicians (UEMO), the Italian College of Physicians, the NYS Academy of Family Physicians, the Federation of Catholic Doctors of the World, the World Council for Health, and the Journal have already joined the campaign of Research & Applied Medicine.
The institutions have signed the “Declaration for the rediscovery of the family doctor” in which they make a “call to all social and political agents to join forces and put the relationship between the doctor at the center of our health systems again and the patient.”
“Good Samaritans”
At the same time, the “Declaration” “recognizes the role that millions of doctors play every day on the five continents, who not only constitute the front line of our health systems, but sometimes go much further, becoming the ‘good Samaritans’ of every person.”
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has applauded this reference to doctors as “good Samaritans”: “It is undoubtedly a title that honors them, but above all makes them responsible to humanity in need of care.”
“It is truly essential to rediscover the relationship between the doctor and the patient as the heart of medicine. Medicine cannot be reduced to recipes or technologies, even if they are very sophisticated, since men and women can never be considered solely for their illness,” indicates the archbishop.
A concern of Pope Francis
Pope Francis has spoken out on several occasions to denounce that “unfortunately, for various reasons, the figure of the family doctor has almost disappeared, and the risk is that, in order to privilege ‘excellence’, the good quality of services will be neglected territorial health or that these become so bureaucratized and computerized that elderly or poorly trained people are in fact excluded or marginalized” (November 14, 2022).
The problem of the health system
Dr. Ramón Tallaj, president of SOMOS Community Care, explained that “the family doctor contributes to basing the health system on prevention. When the doctor-patient relationship is lost or broken, the health system is condemned to intervene only when the patient’s situation has already degenerated, with very high human and social costs.”
The “Thank you, Doctor!” campaign is of utmost importance in light of the extraordinary technological advances and innovation in the field of medicine and pharmacology, which with all their advantages run the risk of marginalizing the fundamental role and essential that the primary doctor must occupy.
“It is tragic that in the end we choose to create a system in which patients are assigned to a medical complex, an anonymous building, in which the doctor-patient relationship has not occurred, and in which the patient distrusts the role from the doctor –acknowledges Dr. Tallaj–. This has led us to ignore the role of the family doctor and to replace it with a building, which is called a hospital.”
“The world without doctors would be dehumanized,” acknowledges Dr. Tallaj. Doctors overcome ideologies and divisions, because they care for the human person and defend their dignity.
More than three hundred primary care doctors from several continents will participate in the audience with the Pope, who have gathered in Rome, where they will participate in several meeting moments to share experiences.
