MOVIE PORTRAYALS OF PHYSICIANS AND THE DOCTOR – PATIENT RELATIONSHIP

The objective of the present study was to evaluate how, over the years, the figure of the doctor and the doctor-patient relationship has evolved in cinematic depictions. Two hundred and ninety two films were analysed. The data was evaluated by decade, from 1909 to 2007, using eleven criteria of assessment for quantitative analysis. The results indicated that, in cinematic depictions, the doctor is an American (58.2%) middle-aged (68.8%) man (88.7%), of the traditional (38%) or post-modern type (40.8%), who works as a GP (general practitioner) (36.6%). The most frequent setting is a doctor’s surgery (47.6%), whilst the doctor-patient relationship is frequently based on an activity-passivity paradigm (61.3%). The positive portrayals are 52.1% even though the negative ones are on the increase especially in the last decade (69%). Up to the 1960s, doctors were described in a positive way; between the 1960s and the 1980s negative depictions prevailed, very often with humorous and satirical connotations; from the 1980s to the present day, criticism lost the humorous and satirical connotations, thus becoming tougher and more direct and particularly centred on the doctor-patient relationship. Hence we speculate that cinema seems to suggest the necessity of a new figure of the doctor and of a new relationship with the patient.