Practice medicine as an “ordinary doctor” in/with the community

Abstract

  The purpose of this paper is to examine how physicians should handle the perspectives of citizens and medical professionals when engaging in community medicine, and how fieldwork experience and dialogue with anthropologists can influence this behavior, based on my own case as a physician.

  I was engaged in community medicine as a family doctor, but once I left my clinical practice, I had the experience of doing fieldwork in a sake-making activity conducted by residents and nurses in a certain village.

  Through dialogue with anthropologists, I learned the important attitude in fieldwork, which is to receive the perspectives of the people living in the community as they are.

  I realized that it is important for doctors to treat the "sense of moyamoya" with care, to ask questions that encompass both medical and life perspectives, and to join the community as a member of "community building" rather than "health promotion".