Humanizing medical identity

Abstract

Vocational health professions entail a risk to the emotional stability of their workers. Day-to-day interaction with people with physical and mental health problems entails a series of added demands that are not found in other professions. In this sense, medical practice can be especially vulnerable because of its close and permanent contact with the existential drama of the patient, which opens the door to uncertainty, guilt, ethical dilemmas, and other emotional destabilizers. However, developing a humane and patient-centered professional identity, in addition to providing excellent clinical intervention, can help us prevent many of these risks. A committed medical identity should optimize the good of the patient in the face of the progressive process of dehumanization. The doctor-patient relationship, the core of medical action, is a personal relationship (the doctor as a caregiver referent) that is dangerously drifting towards a contractual relationship (the doctor as a mere dispenser of services). The medical identity should add a plus of humanity to that special relationship of help and dependence characteristic of the doctor-patient relationship. A relationship based on understanding and acceptance of the patient’s vulnerability, mutual trust and the professional’s personal commitment to the good of the patient can also improve us as persons and favor the intimate development of the most human values. Reflection is the key to developing these values and acquiring tools that allow us to achieve the most human medical identity.