Therapeutic Touch

Culture governs how we interpret many things including acceptable norms for touch. In many cultures, it is not acceptable to make prolonged social eye contact ( it is seen as a forward gesture). It is not appropriate to touch a person, especially a person from the opposite gender. In medicine, touch  (or “haptics“) is a…

My colleague, Prof. Abraham Verghese,  (a big proponent of the physical exam) jokingly told me once that the modern-day doctor needs an X-ray to diagnose an amputation! What is the need to do a physical exam in a clinical encounter? After all,  we get so much information about the patient from lab work, imaging studies,…