The doctor's role

The roles of doctors and their place in society vary from time to time and from country to country, depending on many factors:

• Religious and mystical influence
• Degree of political authoritarianism
• Degree of influence of various health-related lobbies
• Social structure: distribution of wealth and social status, caste, racism, sexism, etc.
• Physicians' social and financial origins and status
• Image of the community
• Image of the individual
• Education level of the population
• ...

Schematically, we can see an evolution in Europe:

• During antiquity: the patient's duty to take care of himself and to accept treatment from a doctor with religious or sacred authority.
• Gradual evolution towards paternalism: the doctor "knows what's good", the patient must obey in his or her own interest
• Very recent evolution :
  • towards patient autonomy: informed consent, right to health, patient charter, lessening of the doctor's authority
  • in countries where healthcare costs have been progressively socialized, various measures aimed at reducing these costs for the state are modifying the doctor's role:
    • loss of physician autonomy: state control over examination and treatment prescriptions
    • development of telemedicine
    • reallocation or delegation of medical procedures to paramedical professions.

Author(s)

Dr Shanan Khairi, MD