"In fully-humanized health care, I envision patients as clients, with doctors as part of the health care team in a role more akin to expert consultants and skilled proceduralists. The consumer is empowered in the network to drive his or her own health — taking the central role rather than the physician.

By continuously humanizing health care and creating therapeutic alliances, we gain one more benefit. We enlist the efforts of the client’s natural support network, a free army of caregivers to reduce the load on our overburdened health care system. But to be effective, the support network will need engaging and actionable information. Together with providers, they will help individuals integrate multiple modalities in their journey toward healthfulness.

Therapeutic alliances not only would reduce costs by sharing information with people in a way that encourages them to take more responsibility for their own health, but they would also reduce the dehumanization rampant in health care today."

Summer Knight is a family physician and physician executive. She is the author of Humanizing Healthcare: Hardwire Humanity into the Future of Health.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, "Humane health care outcomes by creating therapeutic alliances." (https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2021/04/humane-health-care-outcomes-by-creating-therapeutic-alliances.html)