Hekim-hasta iletişimi ve deontoloji-tip etiǧi-tip tarihi dersinin önemi

Historically, physicians, with lawyers, clergymen, and military officers, occupied positions of dominant authority in European and many other societies, and those who received their services expected them to have faith and trust in their wisdom and judgment. Physicians today still often base their ethical integrity on variants of the physicians' Hippocratic oath, elaborated in ancient Greece by the physician Hippocrates. In its early and many later forms, the oath prohibited physicians from explaining to the patients their medical conditions, the nature and purpose of the treatment physicians intended to give those who requested their assistance. The elite status of physicians gained importance in the 18th and 19th centuries when medicine transformed itself from an art into a science, which ranked higher in popular prestige. In more modern times, concepts of human equality and social democracy have eroded unquestioning faith in traditional sources of authority. The status of members of learned professions and practitioners of sciences and vocations no longer exempt them from explaining and justifying what they do. Physicians are no longer considered social or intellectual superiors or natural leaders of their societies, but equal participants. Medical paternalism has become discredited in ethics now applied to medical treatments, often called "bioethics", and patients claim and assert their rights to be treated by physicians and other health-care providers as equal adults and key makers of the health-care decisions that affect them most directly.