BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie

Obligations:
(1) The sick person should try to get well. The first two
aspects of the sick role are conditional upon the third aspect, which is
recognition by the sick person that being sick is undesirable. Exemption
from normal responsibilities is temporary and conditional upon the desire
to regain normal health. Thus, the sick person has an obligation to get
well.
(2) The sick person should seek technically competent help
and cooperate with the physician. The obligation to get well involves a
further obligation on the part of the sick person to seek technically
competent help, usually from a physician. The sick person is also expected
to cooperate with the physician in the process of trying to get well.
What are the rights and obligations of physician? The physician's
role is to represent and communicate these norms to the patient to control
their deviance. Physicians exemplify the shift to "affect-neutral"
relationships in modern society, with physician and patient being protected
by emotional distance. Medical education and social role expectations
impart normative socialization to physicians to act in the interests of the
patient rather than their own material interests, and to be guided by an
egalitarian universalism rather than a personalized particularism. Because
physicians have mastered a body of technical knowledge, it is functional
for the social order to allow physicians professional autonomy and
authority, controlled by their socialization and role expectations.
Summarizing we can say that the physician’s role includes following
norms:
Rights or privileges:
(1)access to patient’s physical and personal intimacy;
(2)professional autonomy;
(3)professional dominance.
Obligations
(1)Acting for the benefit of patient’s well-being (orientation
towards collective and not personal interest);
(2)Behavior according to professional rules (universality/to treat
all in the same way/ vs. particularity);
(3)Application to a high degree of acquired knowledge and skills
to treatment of disease;
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