2024-01-14 03:47:34
Modern medicine claims to be scientific medicine: objective and highly technological, and this is demonstrated by the treatment and improvement of many pathologies that, undoubtedly, were once considered incurable. In daily practice, and at a universal level, this fact has also meant a depersonalization of patient care, with deterioration of the doctor-patient relationship, despite this being a cornerstone of good medicine. Fantastic and brilliant solutions are proposed and achieved, from a scientific point of view, and they are better if the humanity that the medical act must always imply is not forgotten or left in the background. Those of us who trained as doctors in another era believe and maintain that to carry out good practice it is essential to keep alive that holistic and anthropological vision of the subject as our teachers taught it to us, where the clinic was “sovereign”, but where the meaning humanitarian aspect of our daily work went hand in hand with scientific and technological advances. Advances made subspecialization exist, and this, in addition to greatly benefiting the patient, also made the medical act almost a technical ritual at times. In short, I believe that the challenge for medicine today, in such a technical and materialized world, is for faculties and universities to remain firm in being promoters of training professionals who embrace medicine in general, family medicine and to the endless specialties offered to them, reinforcing their philanthropic education. Thus our profession will always show a human face, without subtracting from technology the undoubted value that it has and that it holds, to carry out work with empathy and respect for the other, integrating human sensitivity and knowledge in a total and desired harmony for this world today. During the pandemic, it was clearly demonstrated that the Argentine doctor had an enormous vocation (many gave their lives for their neighbors) and despite having few inputs or meager salaries and fees, he put his vocation and knowledge at the service of others. Contrary to what is believed, technology did not contribute “to cooling the doctor’s heart” but rather he was always at his patient’s side, caring for him, accompanying him and consoling his family despite the high risk involved. René Favaloro said: “Medicine without humanism does not deserve to be practiced.”
Juan L. Marcotullio
1705229269
#Letters #readers #humanistic #medicine