I nuovi scambi tra medici e pazienti: le parole della medicina

Abstract

Medicine showed enormous progresses since the middle of the last century and, thanks to the overwhelming research activities, which characterized that period, the average life span of people has increased extraordinarily. Many diseases that once were considered incurable are now being successfully treated. However, the disease has often been placed at the core of the clinical process rather than the person, the individual, the patient. Even in recent years, the patient doesn’t always find in his doctor the appropriate degree of empathy, and the level of communication that would be desirable. Moreover, today we are living an extraordinary development and spreading use of digital resources and search engines. Patients exploit these tools to obtain any kind of information, included the one in the medical field. Information technology and search engines play an extremely important role in medicine, and they can be seen a pivotal communication instrument between clinicians and patients, although they can also provide inaccurate or incorrect feedback to laypeople looking for answers to health questions, who do not have enough medical knowledge to evaluate the reliability of the source. This problem has been raised by clinicians and, more generally, by health workers, who today operate with a view to greater psychological proximity to the patient, passing from a so-called Disease Centred Medicine to a clinical practice much more sensitive to the needs of the patient, to his experience, to the context in which he lives, thus achieving a Patient Centred Medicine. Listening, attention, empathy and the words that a clinician is required to use towards each patient, during the clinical routine, take on more and more value for a correct doctor-patient exchange and alliance.