Pathographies Call for "Rehumanization" of Medicine
A recent article1 describes that medical practitioners are realizing that they must heed patients' pleas for more personal and "human" care. The author writes:
"These calls for reform from within the medical community have their corollary in what I call pathography, patient narratives about illness (Hawkins 1993). A genre nearly nonexistent forty years ago, pathography seems to have flourished alongside the many striking advances in biomedical sciences and technology over the past three decades. In my own work on pathography, I found that recent pathographies tend to be characterized by two salient factors: an outcry at medical treatment perceived as depersonalizing and even callous, and a tendency to turn to alternative medical therapies. Pathographies demand a thorough and rigorous 'rehumanization' of orthodox medical practice whereby the physician's role is reconceived as one that balances the scientific and the humanistic, and the sick person, rather than the disease, is placed at the center of the medical enterprise. Despite this virtual avalanche of materials, both professional and lay, that criticize medical orthodoxy, medical education and practice appear not to have changed very much."
Considering the fact that one of chiropractic's trademarks is hands-on, manipulative therapy, the profession is far ahead of the medical profession in "rehumanizing" health care.
Reference
1. Hunsaker Hawkins A. Reforming the biomedical model: finding a successor model or going beyond paradigms? ADVANCES: The Journal of Mind-Body Health, (10)1, Winter 1994:55-56.
