Perceiving the uncooperative patient in homoeopathic clinical practice: A case series

Abstract

Understanding a patient is one of the most difficult tasks a homoeopathic physician faces; every new patient presents a new challenge. Building a rapport with every patient is not only a crucial task for the homoeopath, not all patients cooperate with the process, which in itself could be an individualistic feature. To perceive a man in disease, the homoeopath must be a master of interview techniques to create a Hahnemannian integrated totality, which is a challenging task. This paper demonstrated the role of the interview technique in perceiving the uncooperative patient to define therapeutic problem definition and resolution in homoeopathic clinical practice. Listening, observing, questioning, interpreting confronting and empathising were effective interview techniques to successfully create a Hahnemannian integrated totality to understand the man behind the sickness in uncooperative patients. This study demonstrated the successful application of interview techniques that enable a homoeopath to understand a patient as a person through the complaints in terms of integrated Hahnemannian totality to construct a therapeutic problem resolution.