A physician-patient relationship is established as a result of a contract, express or implied, that the doctor will treat the patient with proper professional skill. 3 But it does not require the formalities of a contract—a contract can be implied in fact, which means it “arises from the acts and conduct of the parties, it being implied from the facts and circumstances that there was a mutual i...

The clinician-patient relationship is asymmetric in the sense that clinicians and patients have different roles in the medical consultation. Yet, there are qualities of reciprocity and mutuality in many clinician-patient encounters, and we suggest that such reciprocity may be related to the phenomenon of empathy. Empathy is often defined as the capacity to place oneself in another's position, b...

For historical reasons, much of the attention to the doctor-patient relationship has been based on the concept of informed consent. The concepts of information and consent are both problematic, and as a result, consent forms and advanced directives often undermine the goal that led to the consent doctrine. A better ethic can be derived from stressing the connection between doctor and patient an...

The text is an analysis of the relational complex in a therapeutic space. Analysis started from the need to perform a medical act depending also on understanding these aspects. In the therapeutic process, diagnosis and treatment in their classical sense are just two of the aspects of a relational type interpersonal reality, which is much more complex. In fact, doctor-patient relationship is par...

The Psychiatric Consultation Service at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) sees medical and surgical inpatients with comorbid psychiatric symptoms and conditions. Such consultations require the integration of medical and psychiatric knowledge. During their thrice-weekly rounds, Dr Stern and other members of the Psychiatric Consultation Service discuss the diagnosis and management of condition...

MEDICINE & HEALTH/RHODE ISLAND In 1997, a young pharmacist who had gone on to medical school graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA. In 2000, he was licensed to practice medicine in the state of Rhode Island; in 2001 he earned Board Certification in Emergency Medicine. Several years later, he entered into an agreement with Rx Partners, an Internet pharmacy that employed ph...

A young woman came to see me a few days ago, a former patient now in her twenties. She will die soon; nothing can be done. We shared some recollections of the years when I was her pediatrician, and she expressed some regrets that she was to have no future. But she shed no tears. Still, I cannot forget her eyes staring into the distance as though searching for a way to cry. Momentarily, she smil...