Medical service quality. (c1995)

Abstract

Twenty-five hundred years ago, in The Laws, Plato described two types of doctor-patient relationships. In one type, which he called slave medicine, slave physicians took care of slave patients. The slave physician "never gives him any account of his complaints, nor asks him for any; he gives him some empirical injunction with an air of finished knowledge in the brusque fashion of a dictator and then is off in hot haste to the next ailing slave …” In contrast, is the "medicine befitting free men," in which the citizen physician "treats their disease by going into things thoroughly from the beginning in as scientific way and takes the patient and his family into confidence. Thus, he learns something from the sufferers.... He does not give prescriptions until he has won the patient's support, and when he has done so, he steadily aims at producing complete restoration to health by persuading the sufferer into compliance." In Lebanon at this time, we may be revisiting history and heading toward the widespread practice of slave medicine. The best caution against this is to maintain the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. When physicians talk to their patients and, perhaps more important, when physicians listen and hear what their patients are trying to say, when physicians are caring, compassionate, and sensitive to their patients' needs, physicians are helping them - helping them not only to feel better, but do better. Not surprisingly, physician will find that he will feel better too. The good physician knows his patients through and through, and his knowledge is bought dearly. Time, sympathy, and understanding must be lavishly dispensed, but the reward is to be found in the personal bond that forms the greatest satisfaction with medical services delivered and ensures the optimal quality of medical services.