There’s no substitute for the human touch

ONE of the most disquieting collateral effects of this pandemic is how remote the NHS has become from its nonCovid patients.

Hospitals have effectively made themselves into fortresses, leading to a vertiginous drop in vital cancer referrals, the cancellation of much-needed elective surgery such as knee and hip replacements, and a fall in A&E attendance of up to 50 per cent.

Everyone understands the need to protect the NHS and its courageous staff. But the peak of infection has passed without any sign of the service being overwhelmed.

So why is the return to any semblance of normality proceeding at such glacial speed? Lives are not just being blighted by pain and worry as a result, some are undoubtedly being lost.

Today we report that this growing distance between doctor and patient is also apparent at local family surgeries, where just 11 per cent of consultations now involve actually seeing a GP in person.

The vast majority are by telephone, text, email, Skype or some other virtual medium. And the Royal College of GPs believes there is a ‘compelling case’ for retaining ‘aspects’ of this new way of working.

Which raises the question of whether Covid is being used as cover for a transformation of the way GP services operate – without public consultation.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with carrying out virtual appointments, especially for people who have minor complaints and feel they don’t need to visit the surgery.

But if they should ever become the default position, public trust – already corroded by long waiting times and often inadequate out-of-hours care – could be lost.

Seeing a doctor in person instils confidence in patients and encourages them to be forthcoming about sometimes highly intimate problems.

Also, many signs of illness are detectable only by sight and would not be picked up on the other end of a telephone line.

For all their technical wizardry, the truth is that phones, tablets and laptops can never replace the human touch.