Doctor-patient interaction: a socio-cultural analysis

The article presents a socio-cultural analysis of the problems of doctor-patient interaction in modern health service. In our opinion, compassion to patients in modern medicine has been replaced by biologizing, corporate-technocratic and biopolitical landmarks, which are a result of several interrelated sociocultural factors that have arisen consistently in the development of medical science. We believe that modern medicine is characterized by the following phenomena, indicating a change in its value paradigms: the loss of universal, humanistic ethical attitudes that was in force until the beginning of the 20th century; "blurring" of the patient's holistic image as a result of operational and psychopharmacological interventions, progress in medical technology and equipment; a decrease of trust to physicians, which was historically determined by closeness and subculturalization of the medical community, as well as by a progressive subspecialty of doctors. In the light of incompatibility of modern medicine with a social demand in a humane attitude towards a person suffering from a disease the problem of doctor-patient interaction can be solved only with an existential approach.