Patient-centred medicine

If the redundancy of that title made you wince, read on. All of our profs have informed us that the need to treat patients as people, and not just disease receptacles, was largely forgotten with the widespread application of modern scientific discoveries to the practice of medicine. After cranking out a century’s worth of the sort of soulless doctors we’ve all encountered at one time or another, medical schools are finally taking steps to remind students of the inescapably personal nature of their profession. The expression for this new way of thinking is “patient-centred medicine.” It may be redundant, but it’s a step in the right direction. There’s still something missing, though. To be continued…