Humanistic medicine is an interdisciplinary field in the medical practice of clinical care popular in the modern

health systems Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...

developed countries A developed country (or industrialized country, high-income country, more economically developed country (MEDC), advanced country) is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy and advanced technological infrastruct ...

Problems facing healthcare

In many countries with modern

healthcare systems Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profess ...

are facing enormous difficulties in meeting demands given limited healthcare budgets.

Healthcare professionals A health professional, healthcare professional, or healthcare worker (sometimes abbreviated HCW) is a provider of health care treatment and advice based on formal training and experience. The field includes those who work as a nurse, physician (suc ...

often experience high levels of stress and burnout. Health professionals facing a large number of patients are not giving individual patients the care they want, resulting in a very high number of patients seeking

alternative treatments Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alt ...

and rejecting vaccinations for their children. The rising costs of medical services and

medication A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and re ...

are becoming unaffordable for many patients, preventing these individuals from receiving adequate healthcare without spending a large percentage of their disposable income. Studies have shown that poor doctor-patient relationships result in frequent lawsuits against healthcare providers. These lawsuits have become a major burden to medical personnel and have risen in both number and cost in developed nations.

Practice

Among the approaches used to encourage the practice of a more humane medicine are

narrative medicine Narrative Medicine is the discipline of applying the skills used in analyzing literature to interviewing patients. The premise of narrative medicine is that how a patient speaks about his or her illness or complaint is analogous to how literature ...

and

patient empowerment Patient participation is a trend that arose in answer to medical paternalism. Informed consent is a process where patients make decisions informed by the advice of medical professionals. In recent years, the term "patient participation" has been ...

. Narrative medicine is a way of educating physicians, nurses and other providers that uses storytelling (and active listening) to emphasize the humanity of patient and provider, enabling the "physician to practice medicine with empathy, reflection, professionalism, and trustworthiness." Patient empowerment seeks to create an equal partnership between doctors and their patients, placing values at the center of the healthcare encounter. Both of the practices emphasize the importance of the human experience in the practice of medicine, and help to ensure that the humanity of the patient is not obscured in a morass of lab results, patient charts, and insurance regulations. Humanistic medicine strives to create ideal and balanced care that sacrifices neither cutting-edge science nor the gentle art of creating a caring relationship. Various health professional schools across the

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

have begun to integrate humanistic medical teaching into their curricula in an effort to offset what some view as an over-emphasis on medical technology to the detriment of individual patient care.

Criticism

It is not widely accepted that "humanistic medicine" refers to a belief or set of practices that differ significantly from the biopsychosocial model of care. Further, many of the terms used by its advocates such as "soul" and "spiritual" are not well defined nor specifically explored experimentally inasmuch as these approaches contribute to patient welfare beyond those employed by the biopsychosocial model.

References

# Patz JA, Jodrey D. Occupational health in surgery: risks extend beyond the operating room. ''Aust & NZ Journal of Surgery'' 1995; 65: 627–629. # Bombardieri D, Easthope G. Convergence between orthodox and alternative medicine: a theoretical elaboration and empirical test. ''Health'' 2000; 4: 479–494. # Little M. Healthcare rationing: constraints and equity. ''Medical Journal of Australia'' 2001; 174: 641–642. # Remen, Rachel Naomi. ''Kitchen Table Wisdom''. 2001. 55–58. # Charon R. Narrative medicine: A model for empathy, reflection, profession, and trust. ''The Journal of the American Medical Association'' 2001; 286: 1897. #{{note, little2 Little, J Miles. Humanistic medicine or values-based medicine...what's in a name? ''Medical Journal of Australia'' 2002; 177: 319–321.

External links

The Bravewell CollaborativeLiterature, Arts & Medicine Database The Arnold P. Gold Foundation for Humanism in Medicine
Medical sociology