For an approach that looks at the 'whole reality of the disease'
22 February 2017 - What does it mean to be 'realistic' doctors? This was explained by Prof. Evandro Agazzi, director of the Centro Interdisciplinario de Bioética de la Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City, in a seminar attended by students and teachers of the Faculty of Medicine UCBM.
"It means giving all the necessary credit to the knowledge, representations and interpretations, as well as to the results and methods of the biomedical sciences - he said -, but at the same time realizing that this does not allow us to know and treat thewhole reality of the disease".
Reality and knowledge
It is at a 'philosophical realism' what Agazzi referred to in his speech: not "that mental attitude that rejects ideals in the name of concreteness" as understood in current parlance, rather "that position that considers reality as something that has an independent existence from our knowledge and which, therefore, is not reduced to an accumulation of representations and interpretations". A problem that has historically given rise to endless disputes but which for the teacher finds a possible solution "if one realizes that reality is encountered not only by knowing it but also by operating, and that knowledge itself is not a purely psychic process and intellectual, but something that implies in a unified way the knowing and doing of man”.
For Agazzi this is a particularly valid argument in medicine: “in fact, the disease is not an abstract complex of symptoms and dysfunctions but it is one condition human, the lived existential of a human being and, even, of several human beings (i.e. of the patient, his family members and how many others 'await' him)".
Cultivate the human sciences to refine taste and sensitivity
It follows that “the authentic attitude realistic in medicine it implies attention to all these aspects, each of which is taken in turn taken into consideration by differentiated and partial disciplines or types of approach, but must be integrated with the concern to consider the wholeness of the situation at stake". The philosopher then spoke of “thatunit uniqueness of the individual patient with his state of suffering and vulnerability together with what also concerns the other persons involved".
"For this reason it is essential that in the training and culture of the doctor there is also a place for familiarity with philosophy, religion, art and, in general, with everything that educates taste and sensitivity, in order to truly grasp the complex reality of the disease", He concluded.
