Transformation of Doctors’ Views in Medical Practice: From an Interview with Home Care Doctors

Abstract

Doctors’ suffering in clinical practice has not been addressed in the context of criticism against professionals. Their behavior in dealing with it have been regarded as inappropriate and criticized. While previous studies focused on hospital medicine, the author focuses on home-care medicine, which is an emerging area in Japan and a field responding to the criticism against the predominance of biomedicine. In homecare medicine, doctors are placed at the “interface” between the lifeworld and the biomedical system. There, doctors and patients interact to transform each other. This article clarifies how doctors have been transformed through suffering. Among interviews with homecare doctors conducted in 2017, we focused on Dr. D who provided suggestive narratives. He realized different values of others through dialogue with patients and willingly chose to embrace uncertainty with his patients.