The Paradigm Shift in Health Care and the Patient-Physician Relationship from an American Perspective

Abstract

Religious studies illuminate the relationship between spiritual ideas and traditions of health care. Many institutional responses to changes in the relationship of patients and health care professionals have occurred in the United States since the mid- 1960s. In 196S the United States Congress passed progressive social legislation establishing Medicare, a program that is as close as the United States has come to providing universal access to health care-in this case, for that segment of the population made up of older Americans. All in all, the recognition of patients’ rights, and the special consideration of ethical issues in health professional education and health care institutions, have heightened public awareness and deepened the seriousness of attention given to the quality of patient care. As medical ethics became increasingly professionalized, a social contract view of the doctor-patient relationship came to prevail. American medical education focused almost exclusively on training students to master the explosively expanding biomedical sciences and increasingly powerful technologies.