Clinical Decision-Making for a Person Centered Medicine: the necessity of casuistic reasoning

In their call to develop a consistent, coherent and comprehensive notion of person-centered medicine, Miles and Mezzich have elucidated several specific challenges that need to be urgently addressed. One of these foundational tasks is the development of a more complete understanding of person-centered clinical decision-making. Miles and Mezzich note that while the emphasis on clinical research in evidence-based medicine has served to de-emphasize the importance of the individual patient, the alternative of patient-centered medicine has the potential to de-emphasize the judgment of the clinician by making unfettered patient choice paramount. A practice of medicine that reduces professional healers to an informational role only, one where they lay out potential interventions devoid of context and allow patients to choose from amongst them, undervalues clinical expertise and will clearly not lead to better outcomes. Person-centered medicine (PCM), then, must be able to develop and defend a model of clinical judgment and practice that strikes the correct balance between the science of medicine and the personal experience of the individual in search of care