[The patient-physician relationship: towards humanization of medical practice]

Based on a literature review, this article discusses the physician-patient relationship by presenting anthropological and communicational approaches, physicians' experiences as patients, key concepts showing the need for humanization of the patient-physician relationship, and some theoretical-philosophical reflections relating primarily to hermeneutics. Based on this framework, one can already identify a series of possibilities for implementing humanizing proposals. The challenge now is to classify, publish, and evaluate these proposals.