Transformation of the Patient and Society: A Patient Survivors’ Group and Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign

Abstract

Most biomedical research has the same goal: to make human lives better and healthier. However, sometimes doctors forget their own mission while treating disease. Physicians should remember the old adage to treat the patient, not the disease. The doctor–patient relationship used to be a one-way affair, going from the doctor to the patient. Compared with doctors, society expects relatively little in terms of roles and duties from patients as well as the rest of the population. Thus, society could be a foundational place in which doctors, patients, and research can communicate with one another, or society itself could transform each of these components. The best way for physicians to provide better care is to listen to the needs of patients and society more broadly. We must reflect on whether this kind of transformation is happening in our current society.