Patients: The Rosetta Stone in the Crisis of Medicine

At its root meaning a “crisis” is a separation. In our everyday lives we use the term crisis to designate a period of decision. A crisis is a moment of separation when one must make a decision about a direction. To make a crisis decision, a person needs some criteria or set of norms to guide the decisions that are made. Sometimes, at a moment of crisis decisionmaking, there is chaos when one does not know which norm to use in making a decision. Without some norm a crisis is a significant loss of direction because there are different criteria for deciding which way to turn or how to decide. It is in this most fundamental sense that one can say that contemporary medicine is in crisis.