As a trained allopathic practitioner myself, two decades ago I found myself in similar circumstances (1) and appreciate the dilemma of the young doctors. Since this analysis is after the event, it must be read as a tentative explanation of the confusion we often create for ourselves.
Historical influences on a doctor’s professional behaviour
The beginnings of this story must go back to the time when we clinical practitioners, along with the rest of the scientific community, adopted positivism as the way that knowledge was constructed. A positivist approach emphasises “facts” as perceived by the five senses as the basis of empirical evidence. When these facts are shared by a community of “objective observers”, the common ground becomes the basis of “truth” or “real” knowledge. In fact, the positivists would say this is the only truth, proven and set in stone. Interpretation does not play a role here, as the shared observation is considered to be true (1).
However, this knowledge is still from a particular point of view, however closely shared. Western science, in its claim to be objective, separated the observer from the observed and was willy-nilly given pride of place in the hierarchy of knowledge. Medicine, claiming to be a science, needed to be free of “subjective values” (1). This is one limb of a doctor’s training; the attitude imbibed from it has repercussions which we shall see as we proceed.
