Why doctors need humanities: Include this to make Doctor’s more human



Medicine is defined as the art and science of healing. Today globally, science has largely overridden the art part of healing. In India, entrance to medical schools is based entirely on tests based on scientific facts and concepts with a little of logical/ critical thinking – areas handled by the left side of the brain.
Our medical curriculum requires hours of drudgery in trying to remember facts and figures. Almost no medical school in India lays any emphasis on art in medical curriculum. The right side of the brain is concerned with fine arts including imagery poetry and drawing. As someone said “medical school attracts those who are of left brain, but then proceeds to atrophy what is left of their right brain”.

Unlike physics or chemistry, medicine is not a pure science. Medicine is largely an applied science and it requires certain skills that are developed by observation, practice and experience – similar to the arts more than science. It can be said that medicine is science when it is used to study disease but becomes an art when it is used to practice healing.
While medicine has a long and distinguished history of caring and comforting, the scientific basis of medicine is recent. That medicine is a science is nevertheless the popular belief and this has been reinforced by the advent of ‘evidence-based medicine’. Scientific truths are not true for all time, unlike truths in the field of the arts. In art there is no right or wrong but only a perspective or a point of view, whereas in medicine one being right or wrong is life determining.
Ideas on causation, diagnosis and management of diseases change with passage of time and advent of new technology or understanding. Even in a given time, one medical practitioner may have a genuinely different option of diagnosis and treatment about a particular case with respect to another colleague based on his or her expertise and experience.
With progress of science and its application, there has been a rapid decline in the human element of health care provision. The current technological advances have worsened this divide. The art of clinical medicine is dying in present day set-up with high-tech gadgets. The recent upsurge of doctors being abused and manhandled especially in casualties and emergencies is a consequence of this.
This is occurring not because of their lack of scientific knowledge but is related to their insensitive behavior which emanates from their ignorance as well as inability to handle the emotional distress of sick individuas and their near and dear ones. Doctors should not allow scientific medicine to blunt their humanity, ignore ethics and the need for empathy.

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