Objectivity In Medicine

A narrative offers the full story or at least the part of the story needed to treat that patient. Who is better to give the narrative of your life than you? One cannot deny that the narrative of the individual is important, however, it offers rooms for error. This could result from patients simply being insincere to their physicians or not remembering clearly. However, physicians have to rely heavily on the narrative of their patients as it is the best way to fully understand the illness, the symptoms and finally deciphering the best way to proceed. Scientifically, physicians know through biology exactly how the parts (organs and all) of the body are to function. When one visits a physician, it is more likely that some systematic flow in the …show more content…
This means that scientific knowledge becomes more objective overtime. Objectivity comes in degrees and thus something might be more objective than another, however, this does not eliminate objectivity in the one that is less objective. Over the years, philosophers of science have questioned several concepts of the idea of objectivity and have concluded that they are found to be questionable and at times unattainable. This has led these philosophers to question not only the attainability, but its value. If, it is truly unattainable, of what value is it? And I would argue- why should medical knowledge achieving an objective standard in medicine be subjected to criteria that ‘traditional’ objective truths fail? This raises the question of how should objectivity be defined and if it is, in fact, desirable. I would conclude that objectivity in desirable, and no less in medicine, as it offers physicians the correct guide to treating patients. Like scientific knowledge, physicians use ‘truths’ that have become objective over time, and like scientific objective realities, changes as it becomes more and more objective. If one believes that absolute authority should be given only to ‘traditional’ understanding of objective standards, it would be extremely difficult-to-impossible to convince such a person that medical knowledge could offer objective standards. However, if one should be inclined to believe that traditional understanding of objective, that is, scientific, is one of many or at least more than one way of arriving at objective standard, medical knowledge should and ought to be on that list. It offers a systematic approach with presupposed conditions agreed upon by physicians. This universality offers the opportunity for an objective