James Mills Jr., MD, a founder of emergency medicine, believed he could have greater impact on medical care for the poor in his city by giving up his practice and working in the emergency room full time.
“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.
The participatory decision-making model for patient-physician relationships is the best approach for addressing the individual family-related and social influences that stress that relationship.
Basic information about the two principal instruments used for assessing patients' decision-making competence and learn why both fall short of reliable, objective assessment.
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.
Physicians can help reduce the large number of patients who do not take their prescription drugs due to the high cost by proactively discussing the topic of drug costs during the clinical encounter and developing a plan for assistance.