In 2005 I retired, for health reasons from a career in health service management. Working in every sector over three decades and encountering many clinicians of personable natures it was always frustrating when I would have to persuade a colleague of the benefits of a listening and respectful approach to their patient care. It was an endeavour to try and persuade those on the front line that people have a story to tell which can be both clinically enlightening and also be deserving of respect. I did see some notable converts to a person-centred approach over the years.
On retirement I took on the challenge of the study of theology. After some years of studying the basics with the Jesuits I embarked upon Doctoral studies at the University of Winchester.
During recovery from a personal tragedy I came across the works and writings of Paul Tournier. He was a Swiss physician, a Calvinist who practised medicine at he beginning of the twentieth century. He came to realise that diagnosis and treatment of only the body was reductionist and did not address the problems of the ‘whole person’; their body, mind and spirit. He believed, through years of developing his practice and using a unique Christian psycho-therapy approach that many, if not all, conditions could be understood by the balance of these three aspects of the person. He called his approach ‘Medecine de la Personne’ and formed a group of disciples to his thinking. They met every year in Bossey, France and after a morning bible study would listen to Tournier and discuss their own approach and practice. They were all doctors. Tournier always longed for a surgeon to join his following.
Today there is still a legacy organisation of the same name which meets in Europe every year.[i] This year I was fortunate enough to join them in the Netherlands; as were two surgeons.
My welcome was because I used Tournier’s approach as the basis for my research for a doctorate in theology and practice. After examining his methodology I applied it to the Christian healing ministry, carrying out some empirical research with ministry practitioners. I concluded, unsurprisingly, that Tournier had much to offer all of those involved in the healing of people, both through medicine and through prayer.
Earlier this year I had two hospital stays in cardiology in Southampton. One was a routine procedure and the other was more urgent follow on treatment. I was struck and left smiling by the junior doctors who wanted to know why I was a doctor. Of what? On explanation they would then want to know what my research was about and what it all meant in practice. I was pleased to tell them it was exactly what they were doing. Spending their most valuable time enquiring about my journey, my conclusions and passion for my work, they made me feel interesting and valued. I made a good recovery, not least because I felt ‘whole’ through their ways of caring.  Tournier would have been impressed, I am sure, to know that a hundred years on his natural human interest in his patients was alive and well in his colleagues.
Dr Elizabeth Slinn. DTh, MIHM.
Visiting Fellow.
University of Winchester.
[i] https://www.medecinedelapersonne.org/en
For further reading: Tournier, Paul (1965).The Whole Person in a Broken World, Collins, London.
