The Singapore Family Physician

Back to issue Vol 37 No. 1 - Managing Family Violence

Sreenivasan Oration 2010 Re-defining the Art of Consultation

Cheong Pak Yean
The Singapore Family Physician Vol 37 No 1 - Managing Family Violence
54 - 60
1 January 2011
0377-5305
The re-defined Art of consultation, beyond clinical instinct and hospitality can be put into practice in three ways to complement the scientific approach. Firstly, the healing ambit of the doctor-patient relationship can be extended with better relating and inquiry skills. The doctor can extend his role from an expert to that of a collaborator, from comforting to challenging, and from being detached to being engaged. Secondly, the totality of idiographic and nomothetic data so gathered in this extended consultation can be abstracted as a formulation of issues related to the reason for encounter to complement the usual list of diagnoses. Thirdly, specific skills from psychotherapy can be learnt to augment the potency of ‘doctor as medicine’.