Clinicians are reported as HCPs Health Care Professionals, and I would like to consign that term to history.  I would like them to be referred to as HCPs where the P = Partner. I am not a clinician I have never been to medical school I don’t even have a degree, any sort of degree but I would like to think I am an expert in my body, let’s face it I have been studying it for 50 years and I think I know it quite well.  I am not a machine so why should I be treated like one? You take your car (in my case bike) to the garage and the mechanic, a professional works on IT.  I don’t want to be worked on, I want to be worked with, there is a difference.

As a Health Care Partner they could say “OK that’s quite good but you could try this to make it better” I want to stand up in front of all the “experts” and ask them “hands up, all those who are an expert in wound care” I then want to ask the same group for a show of hands how many think they are an expert in Andy Lavender and see if I get the same show of hands, because that’s what it comes down to, me as Andy Lavender, not a wound, not a diabetic not even a patient but as Andy Lavender.

Now all I wanted to do was hide what I was doing, let them believe one thing and tick their box while I did something totally different. As I got into bed that night and cuddled up to Sue I realised something else. I had my health care partner, her name was Sue, she was my fiancée and together we made a great team, and like she said back when this ulcer happened we would get through this, and as I drifted off to sleep I knew we would, no protocols, no pathways just honest support, honest opinion and team work, a partnership and when it came to my wound I had a Health Care Partnership right there with me, it just had taken me a while to know it.

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