Basic considerations in the physian-patient relationship

Abstract

The everyday changeable socio-cultural contexts make the physician-patient relationship be different, too. The model derived from the Hippocratic premises has been replaced by paradigms of economic tendency, sacrificing, in almost all cases, the patient’s welfare, favouring the requests of budgetary reductions. Nevertheless, the physician-patient relationship conceived from the principles of Bioethics needs to be driven by the rights of the human person. Consequently, it must comply with the anthropological conception of what life is, its inviolable feature and the sense that every therapeutic activity has. In this sequence of ideas, the physician-patient relationship must be based on the reliability principle since the patient puts in the physician’s hands his more valuable asset, his health and angel, and as friend, the physician must respect the information provided by his patient. These and other ethical issues are discussed in the paper that Doctor Pablo Arango Restrepo wrote for the second edition of “Persona y Bioetica Journal”, whit the purpose of establishing the grounds on which health professionals must build their every day practice.