The Art and Science of Practice: The Intersection between Liberal Arts and Allied Health

摘要

So much of modern health care delivery is mechanized: Individuals present for care with an array of signs and symptoms, and the practitioner uses these data to objectively point toward a disease or condition known to encompass these indicators. Clinical determinations are based on comparisons to the measurable data of others, pointing to known causations and correlations yielded in clinical studies. But what if there is not necessarily an immediate or obvious answer to what ails a patient or client? Where do clinicians turn to figure out an answer? The story of health and illness does not end with comparisons against norms and quantifiable data.1 Rather, in matters of wellness as an art, “the healthy state of the single individual patient, as encountered in practicing medicine, can only be determined by comparing the single individual with himself.”1 Does that mean science and art are complementary or exclusive?