ABSTRACT
The goal of medical practice is to maintain and improve the health of individuals and populations, and the goal of medical education is primarily to train practitioners, albeit with an interest in research for its own sake as well as for the benefit of patients. To better meet the needs and expectations of patients, the concept of health has evolved to include the interrelated concepts of physical health and emotional health, as well as spiritual health. Successful clinical practice involves not only skilled interpretation and application of medical data with all its uncertainties, but also the ability to care about and care for individual patients as unique, total people in social and cultural contexts. Curricula on the nature of evidence, taught by members of all the provider groups, would increase everyone’s ability to think critically about all therapies – those considered proved and unproved, conventional and alternative.
