Humanising Critical Care: Role of the Primary Care Physician
Abstract
Most of the patients in critical care units suffer prolonged periods of pain and discomfort. The treatment of such patients has become purely mechanical and devoid of any “human touch”. The critical care physicians often forget about the patient’s anxiety and fears and treat them as just another “case”
A primary care physician with his understanding of the patient and his family is the ideal person in providing the human touch in critical care. He should see that his patients are not subjected to unnecessary suffering and pain. He should serve as an intermediary between the critical care physician and the patient’s relatives in addressing their fears and concerns. He should know the limits of care and when to stop aggressive treatment. For achieving all these objectives the primary care physician should have a clear and broad understanding of the principles and practice of critical care.
When publishing with Kerala Medicial Journal (KMJ), authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Work includes the material submitted for publication and any other related material submitted to KMJ. In the event that KMJ does not publish said work, the author(s) will be so notified and all rights assigned hereunder will revert to the author(s).
The assignment of rights to KMJ includes but is not expressly limited to rights to edit, publish, reproduce, distribute copies, include in indexes or search databases in print, electronic, or other media, whether or not in use at the time of execution of this agreement.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
The author(s) hereby represents and warrants that they are sole author(s) of the work, that all authors have participated in and agree with the content and conclusions of the work, that the work is original, and does not infringe upon any copyright, propriety, or personal right of any third party, and that no part of it nor any work based on substantially similar data has been submitted to another publication.
