PART 2. WHAT IS THE ART OF MEDICINE?
The practice of medicine is an art form that is based on the science of medicine. To put it in another word, the art and the science of medicine complement each other and should always used together. For a successful medical practice that pleases the doctor as well as the patients, a doctor must be an artist and a scientist at the same time.
Like training an artist in another field, a doctor also must be trained as an artist. It is unfortunate that doctors are not at all trained in medical arts during their medical training. Training is instead concentrated on medical sciences, diagnosis, and the treatment of diseases.
While medical sciences are dynamic and continuously change and evolve with the advancements in basic sciences and technology, the medical art remains the same, almost since the times of Hippocrates. In medical science, today what is considered as medical fact, tomorrow, it could easily be discarded ss medically irrelevant.
Then ‘just what is the medical art?’ becomes very important to answer.
As I see it, medical art is the way a doctor approaches a patient, examines, diagnoses, talks and treats the patient that put the patient at ease, while projecting an air of self – confidence, knowledge, experience, caring, and know-how of themself.
The essence of the medical art is the feelings of kindness, caring, humanity and helping, regardless of who the patient is. These feeling are generated on the doctor towards the patients, when doctor - patient encounter occurs, and doctor – patients’ relationships are established.
Practicing medicine with medical art is time consuming, and very satisfying for the doctors and patients. Yet time spent for medical art practice is not compensated by health insurances, and health care companies.
Additionally, medical care in America is increasingly becoming corporatized. Corporate medicine is not interested in medical art and sick patients, but in a quick diagnosis by doing as much as possible laboratory tests and procedures, and squeezing its own full-time doctors and nurses for more work, for the sake of profits. That is why, heartless and profit oriented corporate medicine is cold, robotic and very dissatisfying for the patients as well as for the doctors.
Of course, feelings are a part of our personality trends. Our personality is genetically predetermined. Only doctors with the right personality can excel in the medical art part of the medical practice. Medical knowledge should induce humility, nor arrogance on behalf of the doctors. Dr. Osler who is considered the father of clinical medicine has stated that, “every doctor has to clear his mind from any positive and negative thoughts and approach patients with a neutral mind.”
This is easier said than done. As human beings, we all have our biases, prejudices and preformed opinions. Sometimes, especially in what is called “difficult patients,” the personality and feelings of the doctor and patient can clash, and the practice of the art of medicine and self-control disappear, and temper tantrums prevails
We shall discuss difficult patients in upcoming part 3 of this article next.
