How have doctor-patient relationships changed?
The change has to do with the increase in scientific distance, with the increase in objectivity, with the increase in instrumentation. For the first 15 years of my practice, so much of diagnosis depended on talking with a patient, putting your hands on a patient. The techniques were relatively straightforward technologies. They had to do with x-rays, electrocardiograms, things of this nature, biopsies. But gradually, imaging took over — CT scans, MRIs, needle samples. We learned to do more with blood tests than we had been able to do before. And the drive in medical diagnosis was for complete scientific objectivity. So it was no longer so much of an art as it had been before. What do you mean? Doctors, I think, rely far less nowadays on this personal thing, which had to do with talking and touching and beginning to understand someone and what that person’s life was like. This has done phenomenal harm to the so-called doctor-patient relationship. Also, at a hospital like ours, we treat
