Tina K. Sacks, PhD, Katie Savin, MSW, and Quenette L. Walton, PhD, LCSW
Would you question health decisions made by a 37-year old Black woman whose great-grandfather died in the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee?
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(2):E183-188. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.183.
“Difficult” patient-physician encounters have roots in uncertainty about individuals’ trustworthiness, clinicians’ skills and training, and medical science.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(4):391-398. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.4.mhst1-1704.
Invention of the stethoscope in 1816 changed the patient-physician relationship. Technology, widely used in medicine today, is not a substitute for the physician’s human understanding of the patient’s life.