The guest: are we in “helicopter medicine”?

The perimeter of unsupervised living for children and adolescents has shrunk drastically in recent decades, from several kilometers to a few dozen meters from their home. The unsupervised living space has theoretically become zero today with geolocation applications downloaded by parents. In the 1980s, in the United States, 80% of children went to school alone, today they are only 10%. These trends are notably the result of helicopter parenting.

Helicopter parents are characterized by excessively attentive and overprotective behavior towards their children, often to the point of monitoring and controlling their activities and decisions very, too closely**. This parenting style is motivated by a sincere desire to protect, the goal being to prevent any danger and failure. But the effects of helicopter parenting are significant and worrying for children, adolescents and adolescents. They have lower self-esteem, a loss of resilience, more anxiety and depressive disorders. The mechanism? Loss of autonomy.

When we read that nearly 60% of the doctors surveyed declared, in 2023, that what they appreciated least in their profession was the loss of autonomy, that a third of the doctors surveyed mentioned the loss of control and autonomy as a cause of burn-out**, is it possible that we have somehow entered into helicopter medicine?

Of course, excessive documentation and constant control by agencies are factors contributing to the accelerated loss of physician autonomy in recent decades. But control by hierarchies themselves, such as those of parents in helicopter parenting, must also be considered as a factor potentially responsible for physician disenchantment. When control surpasses autonomy, the consequences for people, regardless of their profession (and age), are demotivation, disengagement, loss of confidence and self-esteem, and loss of resilience.

It is for the virtues of autonomy that we strive daily to make patients more autonomous in the management of their illness(es). Autonomy, sine qua non for the commitment and satisfaction of doctors and other health professionals, has paradoxically been reduced in the context of a leadership that is certainly participatory but which, given the evolution of the system and society, presents more constant supervision and significant controls. Beyond satisfaction and commitment, this reduction is also problematic for learning responsibility, since to become increasingly responsible for one’s decisions and actions, one must become increasingly autonomous.

Of course, the quality of care and the efficiency of our actions cannot be sacrificed on the altar of the autonomy of doctors. It is therefore a difficult equation but not impossible to solve. It is a question of bringing together, as much as possible, the strong expectations and desires for autonomy and de facto responsibilities of doctors, with the needs of health institutions and systems. Only health institutions that will succeed in reducing the distance between these two principles, of needs and expectations, will be able to respond to the challenges of a medicine that must imperatively transform itself.

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