The Physician's Responsibility to the Patient

Abstract

As a university teacher of community medicine and health I do not have responsibility to individual patients. One of my duties is to protect people against the harm that over-enthusiastic doctors and misguided politicians can inflict upon them. My comments on the physician's responsibility to the patients are those of an outsider on the inside. I shall confine myself to two themes: the interference by the State in the doctor's care for his patients; and the ethical asymmetry between the doctor-initiated and the patient-initiated consultation.