2014 Articles

Through a Glass, Darkly: The Challenge of Integration of the Science and the Art of Medicine.

Wyer, Peter C.; Silva, Suzana Alves

We have entered a new phase in the dialogue between proponents of evidence-based medicine and humanistic medicine. Over 30 years of parallel development of patient-centered and evidence-based care make possible concrete approaches to the integration of the fruits of these developments. Such integration is of increasing importance to the viability of today’s highly structured and regulated healthcare environment. Attempts at integrated model building on the part of proponents of both EBM and humanistic care have suffered from common deficiencies. These include the failure to distinguish between decision-making and practice models, failure to illuminate processes traversing categories of knowledge and information, failure to embrace the principles of relationship-centered care and failure adequately to address the epistemological issues inherent to the integration of the experiential and scientific domains of clinical practice. A published model-building attempt is used to illustrate what a correction of such limitations might look like. Efforts to develop person-centered care as an integrated and patient-centered vision of healthcare are encouraged.