Doctor-patient relationships in the private sector: Patients' perceptions

Recent challenges to medical authority have been viewed as having an impact on relationships between doctors and patients. It is argued that these challenges have resulted in moves away from traditional paternalistic relationships. As a result of their market position, private patients as a group might be expected to be most advanced in bringing about change in the doctor-patient relationship. Using data collected from a study of private patients, an analysis of patients' interpretations of their relationships with their doctors was undertaken. The patients' accounts indicated that relationships contained elements of both mutuality and consumerism. The features of the interaction, the organisation of health care in the private sector and the power of the medical profession are used to explain how these relationships develop. It is argued that there are tensions that exist in reality between the principles underlying each model which constrain relationships between doctors and patients moving too far in the direction of either consumerism or mutuality.