High technology medicine and the physician-patient relationship

Abstract

While technologic problems in critical care have become highly refined with precise solutions, ethical problems and solutions have remained fairly primitive. A useful distinction between technology and techniques is made with individual technologies being the parts that make up the therapeutic techniques as a whole. The phenomena of “technical convergence” is discussed wherein we may control each part of the system, but the system itself may be out of control. This is explained in terms of the logical fallacy of composition, noting that a whole may not necessarily have the same characteristics of its parts. Resolution of some of the ethical problems in critical care is suggested through a reexamination of the physician-patient relationship. It is noted that the relationship needs to be personal-technologic rather than sociotechnologic in nature, with the former focusing solely on the best interest of the individual patient and the latter focusing more on the broader concerns of society in the allocation of limited resources. The detrimental effects for the physician as well as the patient of the shift toward the sociotechnologic relationship is explored, especially the dehumanization of the physician. A call for a reaffirmation of the traditional professional model of medicine emphasizing the best interest of patients as opposed to the more popular business model emphasizing materialism and efficiency is given.