Responding to the needs of the patient is the duty of every doctor, but a good doctor-patient relationship must not respond solely to the latter's needs. The Open Access magazine proposes a new model of doctor-patient relationship that is more egalitarian and based on mutual interest, for the good of both.
If the doctor has a duty to take care of the patient, in fact, the opposite is also true: the patient has a moral obligation to assist the doctor in choosing the therapy. For his part, the doctor must learn to look at himself, at his level of work stress, at his work environment and at his health, in order to better assist his patients. The authors call this new type of relationship with the appellation of "mirror window" (window-mirror): a window from which you can look through, reflecting your own image at the same time. All in the complete transparency that a good doctor-patient relationship must have, in total harmony and agreement against a single common enemy: the disease.
Source:
Buetow S and Elwyn G. The window-mirror: a new model of the patient-physician relationship. Open Medicine 2008; 2(1): e20-5.
