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, […]