Opinion: The physician of the future: a precisionist who sees patients as they are
Drug development and evidence-based medicine are aimed at the average patient. But we are all different.
“We see this sometimes” is a phrase doctors use now and then to “reassure” patients. I find it disturbing and paternalistic and hope it is soon purged from our vocabulary, made archaic by precision medicine.
I first heard the phrase in 1986 as a medical student on rounds at Duke University School of Medicine. The rounding team included an attending physician — an internationally prominent neurologist — along with a second-year neurology resident, an internal medicine intern, a pharmacist, and a physician assistant student. As was the culture of the time, we moved from patient to patient and stood around the bedside while the medical student presented the case to the attending physician, who then led a discussion
