Humanization of medicine

Abstract

Medicine has a particularity: its object of study is man himself, so talking about its “humanization” would seem like a contradiction. However, although it may seem paradoxical, doctors often engage in arrogant attitudes and a vain display of “superiority” that does not match their noble function.
The great Canadian medical scholar, Sir William Osler (1849-1919), stated that a good medical professional must meet the four “aches”:
Humanity: it is rightly stated that the first “drug” that a patient receives… is the personality of the doctor and that the first therapeutic “procedure” is to shake the patient's hands. It is proven that the best drugs fail if the flow of bilateral empathy that initiates a granite relationship with the patient is not established. The Spanish doctor and philosopher Pedro Laín Entralgo stated: “The entire medicine is based on the Doctor-Patient relationship.”
Honesty: the doctor must be morally upright in the broadest sense of the word, from the obligation to explain in detail, to his patients or to the parents or guardians of his patients, the degree of severity of his condition to the most complete information of possible risks of diagnostic procedures and probable adverse effects of therapeutic measures, especially those most relevant, in the management of the disease. He must also convey honesty in the management of his pecuniary remuneration; His medical fees must be fair and commensurate with the service provided.
Humility: the doctor, in his role as "healer", does not always assume that human role and, at times, appears to the patient and his environment as a "demigod" embedded at the zenith of his science, at the highest summit of its vertical position. The cyclical alternations of lights and shadows, successes and errors, successes and failures, that every doctor has in his "history", provide him with a periodic bath of humility that acts as a true antidote against inexcusable arrogance.
Humor: to be able to cope with a practice that is, at the same time and in equal parts, rewarding and disheartening. In my long medical practice I have observed countless health professionals who have developed a keen sense of humor, as if by observing so many cases of human distress, a compensatory mechanism that cushions hypertrophy hypertrophies in the personality of the health professional. so much affliction.