Medicine as a science

The great advances in medicine over the past 100 years have come about as a result of new scientific knowledge. However, today there is a widespread ambivalent attitude towards medicine – both within the various medical disciplines and on the part of the general public. Research as a part-time or full-time activity or as a career option has become unattractive and unpopular for the majority of medical doctors. A certain distrust of medicine that is excessively dependent on technology has led to a well justified desire for a “human“ form of medicine which is oriented towards a “holistic approach“. This is, however, also associated with the potential risk that medical doctors may lose their traditional closeness to the basic scientific principles, i.e. for their practical-clinical work they do not apply the results of the research in the sense of evidence-based medicine.

Medical doctors must be in the position to pursue the advances that have been made in research and to realistically estimate their potential importance for medicine. Also, clinicians who are primarily active at the patient’s bedside must understand the language of the different sciences and must contribute, as practically and as efficiently as possible, to the flow of information “from the bench to the bedside and back again“.
Against this background, the SAMS has drawn up a Position Paper which describes possible reasons for the calling into question of present-day medicine and at the same time provides concrete models and proposals for a reorientation of the situation. These are based on existing and recently introduced elements which already go in the required direction; these include, for example, the MD-PhD Programme and the possible options created with the Swiss Bologna model.

Position paper PDF (258 KB)

Presentation: Medicine as a science PDF (2 MB)

Press release (in German and French)