Hopefully, this chapter has shown how radically doctors’ consultations nowadays should differ from those of, say, 50 years ago. It seems that the fundamental elements are setting aside the illness/diagnosis model with its direct questions about bodily systems and adopting a patient-centred counselling style with its associated intuitive component. In this way doctors can not only elicit the real reasons why a patient is consulting them, but work out solutions together. By tackling problems at a deeper level doctors can learn from the relationships with their patients and help them to apply this understanding to other relationships. The doctor can then truly be said to be fulfilling his or her role as teacher, as the derivation of the word doctor implies.
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