Toward creating physician-healers: fostering medical students' self-awareness, personal growth, and well-being.
Novack, D H; Epstein, R M; Paulsen, R H
[Article] Academic Medicine. 74(5):516-20, May 1999.

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To restore the "humanism" in medical care, medical education needs to espouse the goal of creating physician-healers. Critical, and often neglected, factors in healing are the personal development and well-being of the healer. Unexamined attitudes and biases and personal stress can interfere with patient care. Personal awareness and well-being can contribute to physicians' using their emotional reactions to patients for their patients' benefit. The authors suggest goals and objectives for medical education that can promote trainees' self-awareness, personal growth, and well-being, and comment on how medical educators might achieve and evaluate these goals and objectives.

(C) 1999 Association of American Medical Colleges