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Later this morning I’ll be going to see my doctor. While she will want talk about my health, I’ll be interested in her morale, because I’m wondering how she is coping with the volume of interest generated in her profession in the last week. Almost every day there has been a report scrutinising an element of healthcare, quoting statistics which don’t always sound favourable:

34% of doctors surgeries from a sample of 1000 in England failed to meet at least one of the required standards of good practice. 25 patients per month were reported as being harmed by NHS staff blunders… and then there has been all the stuff about delays in accident and emergency and the lack of hospital consultants at weekends.

It sounds pretty gloomy and I don’t suppose there is much my doctor can do to fix it, particularly as she is not in the health care area covered by these statistics. Such information tends to do two things. It understandably highlights the percentages of deficiency rather than applaud the percentages of success, and it can be discouraging to the practitioners.

At the heart of the Christian understanding of healing, there are two mysteries. The one is the mystery of suffering. We can’t predict how often it will happen, when and to whom; nor can we guarantee than in every instance a particular line of treatment will bring success in a determinable time-span.

And the other is the mystery of care. It cannot be turned on like a tap. It cannot be measured in terms of guaranteed results as on a production line. A baker might have fallen out with his wife, but that need not lead us to complain about quality of his cakes. But if a doctor is overworked or feels under pressure, her ability to fully engage with the patient may be compromised..

In Christian understanding, care and compassion are more than a quantifiable response, more even than sympathy. Jesus enters into the pain of the other, and only through understanding his or her plight does he then determine how best to heal. Even a casual look at his miracles indicates that he had no instant answer. Everyone was dealt with as an individual according to both need and potential.

So while we clearly need to monitor the extent of patient safety in the health service, may that never diminish our respect for and our encouragement of people who meet face to face with the mystery of suffering not just with skill but with the mystery of care.

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