APPROACH TO VITAL FORCE ;
COMMON ASPECT OF HOLISTIC MEDICAL SYSTEMS

International conference of Medical Education, 5th-8th September 2004, Edinburgh, Scotland

Despite the consensus existing among health working whereby medical discourse is presented as a unified system, there are at least three major paradigms in medicine, each of which has its own methodological, and cognition logic features. These are the experimental, the rationalistic and the ethno-soci0-medical paradigms. Of course, these titles present the outstanding features of each paradigm, and over the years the overlap between them has been increasing. Unawareness of this diversity of medical paradigms can create cognitive problems as well as performance problems affecting physician-patient relation, clinical decision-making and also research. Therefore an exclusively technocratic ideology in medical training not only suppresses the cultural and enlightening aspects of medicine, but also causes a number of major disorders in medical practice and theory. Since clinical medicine in essence is not a pure science like physics and chemistry but rather is a semi-experimental science, teaching philosophy of medicine to medical students is of double significance. Development in the philosophical outlook of physicians in analyzing clinical phenomena is possible through presenting a course in the philosophy of medicine and providing occasional philosophical discussion in textbooks.