The physician and the patient - soulful dialog or health care services?

Abstract

The article raises the question of medical ethics in the postmodern era in the aspect of the relations’ between doctor and patient changes which are detected in the substitution of the direct verbal with depersonalization and standardization of the treatment process. Comparison of the main characteristics of social processes has revealed that the changes above are the direct results of the postmodern era. Transforming medicine in the part of the service sector, it introduced the new depersonalized identity into medicine: a service provider who works in accordance with medical economic standards (doctor) and a service consumer (patient). This allows considering the emergence of medical economic standards as natural result, virtually replacing the category of “morality” for medicine. Possible solutions to correct of the situation on a personal and national level were offered: “simulation of modernity”, return to the classical propaedeutic canon and the synthesis of the modern achievements and the traditional approach.