The Doctor-Patient Relationship in the Practice of Medicine

Abstract

The patient-doctor relationship is based on the principles of interaction, collecting data and integration of both interaction and data into an overall diagnosis/therapy. Patients with functional abdominal disorders are seen as representatives of today's general patients and a study of their management in present medical practice is reported, as revealed through literature. The literature reveals an almost complete neglect of interactional and integrational principles. This holds true even for psychosomatically oriented literature, which offers some crude clinical guidelines at best. Thus the primary physician gets little support from psychosomatic medicine in understanding the full meaning of the doctor-patient relationship.

The clinical implications of the relationship are demonstrated through a short case history and implications for future training are described which are based on the primary physician's actual working experiences.