ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the common challenges faced by those who strive to learn, teach, and practice the patient-centered clinical method. Clinical practice often seems arduous enough when limited to the diagnosis and treatment of disease; suggesting to clinicians that they must also consider patients’ perspectives on their health and illness experience, as well as the social context in which patients live their lives, may seem overwhelming. In disease-centered interviews, doctors simplify their patients’ problems by reducing them to disease categories. The focus is on the problem, not the person; the personal, social, and cultural contexts seem irrelevant to the physician’s central mission of diagnosis and cure. Primary care has become too complex for an individual clinician to work as a “lone ranger”; addressing the broad determinants of health requires the specialized skills of professionals from several different disciplines.
