2 + 2 = ?

individual - self

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group- population

	2 + 2 = 5 a notice put up in Moscow during the first Five Year Plan, indicating the possibility of getting the job done in four years, if workers put their backs into it Burgess, A. "1985", 1978

2 + 2 = 5 - stands out in three other senses:

Firstly, it stands politically for the healthcare enterprise as a whole, that is, the NHS, private sector, organisations of various kinds, volunteers, carers; plus theory, practices, management and being political let's add policies. This is due to the ongoing nature and level of political healthcare dialogue and debate. The Left, the Right, funding, history, public engagement, the electoral cycle and associated political party advertising.

The arithmetic above is a dialogue. A dialogue that lurches from politician's promises, to their knowledge that health care staff will still deliver. The health care workforce knows the logic very well: it is summed up in what is termed workforce planning.

Second, what I have previously referred to as 'legacy issue', those health care, health systems problems that have been ongoing problems across several decades as experienced (wrestled with) by successive professionals and today's new students and trainees. These are 'problems' by virtue of being:

• poorly defined (often by their cussedness, not for want of efforts)
• What is the history, the root of 'care' and 'caring'?
• the siloed nature of knowledge;
• by subjects, i.e., sciences, history, economics, sociology
• dichotomised knowledge and concepts, i.e., mind-body, subjective-objective, quality-quantity ...
• being universal;
•  spanning the individual and group
•  being national and global
•  being global in Planetary terms
• the need for multiple disciplines with the standpoints and interests that arise;
• the dynamics of time: history, present, future;
• The meaning of 'progress' - scientifically, technically, socially and politically;
• Identity and personhood in the health context
• Well-being
• Ill-being
• Integration of the above.

Thirdly, Hodges' model has four explicit care - knowledge - domains. In healthcare we must always have due regard for the spiritual dimensions of our patients, carers, community and the communities of practice that we work within. So, in Hodges' model, or more accurately encompassing the whole model and extending beyond it we must contemplate and be cognizant that 2+2 does indeed equal '5'.


Source: Burgess, A. "1985", London Hutchinson (1978).
Spotted in Sam Read's bookshop Grasmere.