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Biomedical subjects

C E Rudebeck

Publications and source records attributed to C E Rudebeck.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

The doctor, the patient and the body.

Michael Balint has helped us realize that the clinical interaction is, above all, an inter-human interaction. However, the lived experience of the body -- the existential anatomy -- occupies but a very small space in the consciousness of medicine. Even the "psychosomatic body" is a theoretical construct favouring observation rather than understanding. The doctor shares the conditions of embodied life with his patients, and, in addition, has the opportunity to refine his sensitivity to the variations of bodily experience in his work with patients. Thus, a bodily empathic basis for clinical interaction is laid on which understanding and diagnosis may reinforce one another in a common endeavour.

Education, Medical, Continuing↗
PubMed1998

[The human language of medicine. Physical expression of empathy added to diagnosis promotes understanding].

The article consists in a review of the clinical encounter in terms of existential anatomy and bodily empathy. Making a diagnosis and understanding the patient are not seen as discrete, mutually exclusive endeavours. In addition to relying on their biomedical expertise, doctors need to be attuned to their patients' symptom presentations as living, experiential expressions of the body, existential anatomy. By 'sharing' his patients' basic bodily conditions, the doctor accumulates abundant knowledge throughout his professional life. Diagnosis is preceded, and its accuracy enhanced, by grasping the experiential essence of the patient's symptomatology. The doctor's ability to communicate with the patient within the realm of existential anatomy is what is referred to as bodily empathy. It is proposed that satisfactory management is dependent on interplay between diagnostic expertise and bodily empathy.

Communication↗