"If there is not a profoundly different culture, there will be no culture at all," was the legacy left by William Osler, about a century ago. And today, Medicine is called upon to draw from this. Paradigm shifts (Precision Medicine, based on medical evidence), the march of biotechnology (e.g., medicalization, healthism) and digital technology (e.g., telemedicine, artificial intelligence), the reorganization of healthcare services (e.g., care models, patient-centered care), and the emerging nursing needs (e.g., aging, chronic diseases) — all of which influence the roles of the main protagonists — the doctor and the patient — continuously expand the humanitarian deficit of modern Medicine.
Within this context, the doctor-patient relationship, which will never cease to be at the core of humanitarian Medicine, faces significant pressures for readjustment. At the same time, the transfer of a large part of Medicine's authority from the doctor to healthcare systems affects collective behavior among physicians and shapes new agendas. Essentially, Medicine is now called upon to clarify what must necessarily be lost and what it will choose to preserve from all those elements that have traditionally defined its humanitarian expression.
In this particular moment, doctors are called upon to act as the "organic intellectuals" who give contemporary society a humanitarian awareness of illness. Their participation in shaping and operating the care models that future healthcare systems will adopt constitutes a profoundly humanitarian act of great importance.
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