[The physician-patient relationship in the contexts of different medicines]

The quality of the doctor-patient relationship depends at least in part on the way in which various non-specific factors influence disease and healing processes, which applies in particular to the subjects' beliefs (attributions) concerning what causes or prevents disease and the efficacy of various possible remedies. This favours the alternative medicines since in the exchanges with the patients, their models of etiopathogenesis and of mode and mechanism of action of proposed remedies come much closer to common sense models than those of modern scientific medicine. Such an advantage is increased by the fact that at least 80% of the encounters between physicians and patients concern situations of malaise or discomfort not identifiable as specific diseases. In such situations, official medicine often fails to exert the necessary functions of listening, explaining, counselling and reassuring, but tends to an inappropriate use of diagnostic and therapeutic tools developed for specific pathologies. Therefore, the dialogue between the different medicines, by promoting the re-establishment of a patient-centered approach, can increase the efficacy of the interventions which depends both on specific technical factors and the quality of the relationship.