Person-Centered Medicine: Theory, Teaching and Research

Abstract

Person-Centered Medicine (PCM) is a new interactionist, deterministic, extrinsic Paradigm of Medicine, born in 1999, based on the theory of the “determinate and the quality indeterminate relativity of biological reactions”. Structuring a new health epistemological model developed from the medical science base of interactionist investigations, it is consistent with the Allostasis and Epigenetics epistemological changes in physiology and genetics and defines a new phenomenological hermeneutics of human nature: Kairology, defining the person’s mystery and destiny. A complete epistemological definition of a “Person-Centered Health interactionist and non-deterministic health model” was presented by the author in 2005. Person-Centered Medicine in 1998 was officially presented as the leading epistemological structure of the Milan School of Medicine, a priority for medical education in postgraduate courses, starting from the previous foundation of Medical Counselling and its teaching method. Since 1998, the Person-Centered Clinical Method (PCCM), born as the PCM clinical application, was introduced and taught in all of the postgraduate courses and in the University Quality System and assisted the physician’s formation. The Person-Centered Clinical Method changes the operation of Clinics, introducing a three dimensional, non-deterministic structured work on the person: “Diacrisis”, which in the  “Person diagnosis” and in the “Cross ratio” structured assessment of resilience and vulnerability, in the interlocutory physical examination, in the clinical objectives assessment and in a literary clinical synthesis and portrait, ensures that information about the subjective and objective person’s and hypotheses about their relations are depicted together. The learning objective of PCM and PCCM are theoretical and practical and PCM teaching is characterized by a structured training in Università Ambrosiana, organized in International Master’s and in “Licentia Docendi” courses.In 2002, the first investigation of PCCM teaching effects on clinical practice by 20 trained physicians who assisted 16,000 persons was conducted. The results documented a substantial reduction in drug prescriptions, hospital admission requests, technical examinations and an increase in physicians’ professional satisfaction.