Patient, Client, Collaborator, Journeyman By Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
Jan 2012
Jan 2012
Last night I was
bouncing around my tongue the words, patient
and client, wondering which more
accurately describes the persons who come to see me. Wondering, too, how they
viewed themselves, and wondering which I
like when I consult a colleague.
The two words feel
different in the mouth. Pay-shent is soft and rather nice to say, while kli-ent has a much more mechanical,
clipped quality to it. The Latin derivation of patient
is patiens , meaning “to suffer or bear,“ while the word
client is derived from cliens, which means, rather scarily,
“one who is obliged to make supplications to a powerful figure for material
assistance”. I don’t think I like
the implications of either, but I need a word, a recognizable word.
My profession of counsellor/psychotherapist
customarily uses the word client, while medical professionals (GPs,
specialists, physiotherapists, etc) and most of the alternative health professionals
(acupuncturists, naturopaths, herbalists, etc) use patient. Does this mean, when a person comes for physical healing
they are automatically seen as someone who suffers and is fixed by an expert,
in a passive sort of way, but when they come for mental and emotional work,
they must actively bow down to the so-called expert, or as one commentator
says, be responsible for their solutions because an expert says so. A modern
interpretation of client is one who is engaged in business with an operator. Urk!
The power play implicit in both words of patient and client irks me.
Two studies I’ve read on what people who go
to health professionals prefer to be called got contradictory results. One
claimed the majority of customers (there’s another word) prefer to be thought
of as “patients,” while the other asserted that they like to be called
“clients”. So there you go.
Perhaps both studies were biased in the way their questions were designed and
got the results they expected, perhaps the two samples were too radically
different to bear comparison; who knows.
As I see it, coming for therapy, whether
for physical, emotional, or mental pain/dis-ease is collaborative work. There must be a willingness on both
sides to find and enhance the best course of action for greater whole self
health, to facilitate a person feeling well in themselves. So, maybe I could
call the other person my collaborator.
I rather like that – even with its dual meanings of double espionage, as
well as those who work together on a joint project (we’ll forget about the spy
bit, though).
Words, words, words. Instead of choosing
one word over another perhaps I could use whatever word suits the quality of
relationship. A health forum I visited in preparation for writing this article
queried why we need a word at all, but this is a cop out because we still refer
to those who come to us as either “patient” or “client” (and each word comes
with a portmanteau of meanings and assumptions, and the word we choose betrays
our bias). Also, those like me, who write about our cases, albeit disguised, need a good word. Parts of me lean towards “patient,” for
its soft tone; parts of me has been conditioned by my professional training and
the idea of the person actively participating in their healing, likes
“client”. I best prefer, though,
“collaborator” for its sense of partnership in a joint endeavour, of fellowship on a journey
where the process of discovery (of choices, awareness, insights, etc) is the
destination, not the destination as an end, and I am a guide, for I have journeyed
with many over the years. At the heart, I am a fellow journeyman. We journey
together.
