Toward creating physician-healers: fostering medical students' self-awareness, personal growth, and well-being.
To restore the "humanism" in medical care, medical education needs to espouse the goal of creating physician-healers. Critical, and often neglected, factors in healing are the personal development and well-being of the healer. Unexamined attitudes and biases and personal stress can interfere with patient care. Personal awareness and well-being can contribute to physicians' using their emotional reactions to patients for their patients' benefit. The authors suggest goals and objectives for medical education that can promote trainees' self-awareness, personal growth, and well-being, and comment on how medical educators might achieve and evaluate these goals and objectives.
Novack
D H
DH
MCP-Hahnemann University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19129, USA. novack@auhs.edu
Epstein
R M
RM
Paulsen
R H
RH
D001364:Awareness; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*