The Physician in the 21st Century

Abstract

From Hippocrates to Osler, the sacrosanct physician-patient relationship has been paramount. Hippocrates is best remembered for the Oath that bears his name(1), often recited at medical school graduations, which places the patient first and foremost in the physician encounter. More than two thousand years later, William Osler, the renowned professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Oxford, wrote that the premier quality of a good physician is “aequanimitas”, meaning calmness and patience(2). The foundational idea of the personal, caring relationship between physicians and patients has clearly withstood the test of time. Perhaps it can serve as a guidepost for the enormous changes coming in medical care in the 21st century. Indeed, across the ages of advances in scientific discovery, the special nature of the physician-patient relationship, exemplified by compassion, has been the mainstay of medicine.[...]