Can we educate physicians to be more human?

By Brooke Holmes, Special to CNN Editor’s note: Brooke Holmes teaches the history of medicine and Greek literature at Princeton University. She writes with The Op-Ed Project . http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/14/my-view-can-we-educate-future-physicians-to-be-more-human/?hpt=hp_bn5 "For all the strides we’ve made through technological innovation, medicine is failing at the very human art of treating patients. Doctors are ill-equipped to deal with factors like diet and poverty, which are now responsible for over half the cases of premature disease and death in the United States. Armed with state-of-the art drugs and machines, they don’t always consider whether using these resources will cause more harm than good. In many cases, it no longer makes much sense to call what physicians and patients have a “relationship” at all." "Let’s back up and ask an even more fundamental question: What do we want from our doctors? In a word: communication." "Right now we inhabit a paradox. We tell pre-med students they need to focus on the sciences and then we complain that the doctors they become don’t treat us like people. If we want to improve the quality of health care, we need to be educating future physicians to think qualitatively and quantitatively, humanistically and scientifically."