Autonomy and Ethical Modes of the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Abstract

We have argued evidence from medicine and medical psychology shows that the nature of disease's impact on persons is a wholesale disruption of the characteristics we normally associate with personal integrity. This cascade of disruption has been explored in Chapter 2 and in earlier publications (Bergsma, Thomasma 1982). Additionally, literature on the concepts of health and disease rarely pays attention to the multi-leveled impact of disease on persons. Rather, the arguments regarding the evaluative nature of concepts of disease, substantial or functional, usually neglect the social and personal context in which illness arises and proceeds (Nordenfelt 1995).

This chapter contains modified portions of two articles: Thomasma, D.C.: 1992, ‘Model of the Doctor-Patient Relationship, Part I,’ 1(1): 11–31; and 1993, ‘Part II,’ 3 (1): 10–26, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. Used with permission.