The Art of Being a Doctor

Abstract

Medical scientific progress has brought life expectancy in many Western countries to 80 years of age and above. This is at the same time the result and the cause of an increasing attention to health. We ask medicine, and medics, to help people to live longer and to heal, but also, and most of all, to better sufferers’ quality of life. It is true that people’s need to have somebody who takes care of them when sick is rooted in the history of the evolution of our species, but it is also true that underestimating the communicative relation with the patient can be a risk for scientific medicine. The result can be a dissatisfaction with a kind of medicine that is felt rushed and defensive and consequently the use of pseudomedicine which seems nearer to the needs and timeframe of those who are suffering. The art of being a doctor is therefore the ability to give scientific technicality a human side and to be a role model in order to build an alliance based on solidarity and trust.