Introducing the community to medical students and residents

Therapeutic Aspects of the Doctor/Patient Relationship

“…Medical education in the United Kingdom is in the process of change and appropriate attention is now being directed towards these factors. The aim is not that they should come to dominate the medical curriculum but merely that they should enter into it as an important and integrated part of each student's training, both at the pre-clinical [50,53], and clinical level [21,25,72,80,83,84], The choice of medicine as a career in the future may involve a much more conscious search for an acceptance of the interpersonal basis of some disease and of the nature of medical responsibilities. The 'doctor image' shows no hint of being less needed -it is in the interests of pa tients that it be vested somewhere in high standards of skill and virtue combined with a sense of obligation to the individual and to the family in society.…”