The Doctor as Parent, Partner, Provider… or Comrade? Distribution of Power in Past and Present Models of the...

The commonly occurring metaphors and models of the doctor-patient relationship can be divided into three clusters, depending on what distribution of power they represent: in the paternalist cluster, power resides with the physician; in the consumer model, power resides with the patient; in the partnership model, power is distributed equally between doctor and patient. Often, this tripartite division is accepted as an exhaustive typology of doctor-patient relationships. The main objective of this paper is to challenge this idea by introducing a fourth possibility and distribution of power, namely, the distribution in which power resides with neither doctor nor patient. This equality in powerlessness-the hallmark of "the age of bureaucratic parsimony"-is the point of departure for a qualitatively new doctor-patient relationship, which is best described in terms of solidarity between comrades. This paper specifies the characteristics of this specific type of solidarity and illustrates it with a case study of how Swedish doctors and patients interrelate in the sickness certification practice.