at Antonio Panti
23 GEN –
Dear director,
Roberto Polillo, in a recent article on QS, examined the decline of the so-called “medical dominance”, i.e. the social role (and political power) recognized to the profession. A historical excursus to support an undoubtedly limited and biased thesis but with many aspects of truthfulness.
I remember, I was a young doctor, the season of Democratic Medicine and I was well aware of the subsequent, simultaneous evolution of medicine, healthcare and society. Technology has almost overwhelmed the profession and the burnout, the discomfort that affects many colleagues around the world is explained by sociologists with the profound changes in the doctor-patient relationship, with the oppression of the health administration, with the overwhelming developments of science and technology.
Polillo points out how the fight of Democratic Medicine against the “medical corporation” and its “esoteric knowledge” has been defeated by history, however winning in practice because the “corporation” is in crisis today, but not because of the empowerment of aware citizens but because it is overwhelmed by Dr. Google which, as a tool of the multinationals, induces needs and proposes solutions that the doctor often ends up having to undergo. There is no longer the doctor of the past nor the patient of the past.
The columnist attributes the responsibility for this state of affairs largely to the abandonment in which public health has been left by politics. I also add to the lack of public debate on social rights. “The process of debasement” of the profession “makes a good relationship between doctor and patient useless and inessential”, concludes Polillo.
I repeat, as a witness of the facts, that I do not entirely agree with this interpretation of the recent history of the profession but, accepting the conclusions, albeit in part, the age-old question arises: what to do? is there a remedy?
The cited article lacks perspectives and there is no reference to the AI which is entering daily practice and will undoubtedly overwhelm the methodology and practice of medicine as well as the relationship with the patient.
How to experience this change, as a loss or as a challenge, as a defeat or as an opportunity? Will doctors be able to master an increasingly pervasive technology? Do information technology and AI complement and support the profession or replace it?
The discomfort of doctors is understandable, too many concomitant factors determine it. This discomfort certainly affects the relationship but how is it experienced by the patients? Medicine has become so broad that the problems are qualitatively different than they were a few decades ago. However, the need for help in the disease has not changed and the relationship between doctor and patient should not have suffered too much; many inquiries confirm this together with daily experience.
But Dr. Google exists and when the doctor will inevitably be conditioned by the answers of the AI, which collects all the patient’s data and those of the literature and will give answers based on the elaboration of these, will anything change?
The technique will change many habits of the profession but the doctor’s role will remain as long as he knows how to dominate the new tools of the digital age and not be dominated by them. A new pact with society is possible if the doctor will remain guardian of the human relationship, manager of empathy and, at the same time, master of the technique useful as an instrument of treatment and therefore support of his professionalism.
Antonio Panti
January 23, 2023
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