Real v Ideal Guidelines

Rani Lill Anjum, Thinking about guidelines:

I was really interested in the questions of how guidelines could include more leeway for the health professional. Rigid guidelines offering cost efficient solutions (e.g. 15 minutes per patient, or 30) emphasises the rule utilitarian approach and makes it difficult to use judgement and experience to give the best health service for the individual patient. If the patient represents at least as much of the causally relevant evidence (medical history, genetics, life situation, etc.) as population data, then how come the latter is given epistemic priority?

I thought that there were many good intentions behind the guidelines, but also a wide range of interests depending on who commissioned the guideline and what they want to use it for. This is why I thought the tension between real and ideal is important. New public management emphasises top down management, controlling, reporting, standardisation and efficiency. In the clinical setting, this approach might create chronic illness, if we simply treat or test the symptoms that the patient reports. Those who work on the importance of patient context and stories (Trish, Matt, Brian, Anna-Luise) have important knowledge to share, and show also that the most efficient treatment of such illness is to take more time with the patient to figure out what is actually wrong before offering an intervention or a test. Why could this not be in guidelines about chronic illness, MUS and comorbidity? Then we would also avoid reductionism and dualism of treatment.