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Eric Davidson
National Institute of Mental Health Bethesda, Md

JAMA. 1997;277(21):1680-1681.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—The "dehumanization" of medical care is an important issue that demands more attention. The explosion of medical technologies and managed care corporations have advanced medicine, but at an expense. The article by Dr Suchman and colleagues¹ reminds us that the communication a physician has with his or her patient is an important part of the medical treatment. It is a challenging task to teach somebody how to be an empathic listener. However, if clinicians recall why they chose a career in medicine, they might find that their original motivations were based on human qualities such as empathy and compassion.

Oliver Sacks wrote in An Anthropologist on Mars,² "The study of disease, for the physician, demands the study of identity, the inner worlds that patients under the spur of illness create." In many cases, practicing medicine within the context of the inner world of the patient . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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