​Articles of China Ethics Online Reprinted by Authentic Medical Newspaper Health News

Abstract: Both doctors and patients should realize that doctor-patient relationship is essentially a comrade relationship based on the facts of diagnosis and treatment. Liang Lizhi's reflection on the doctor-patient relationship through the epidemic has been highly recognized by medical staff, ethics circles and the public.

 On February 18th, 2020, China Ethics Online, the gateway platform of the Research Center of Ethics and Moral Construction of Renmin University of China, which is the key research base of Humanities and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education, released an original work ‘Liang Lizhi: Doctors are not God but Comrades-in-arms’ through WeChat public platform. The article was written by Liang Lizhi, lecturer of the Capital Medical University. The article was highly attractive and widely echoed. On March 6th, it was published as the headline in the human version of Heath News and simultaneously published the Health News Culture Channel through Wechat platform. 

Liang Lizhi think that people’s cognition of the role of the physician played a very important role in the doctor-patient relationship. Therefore, in ‘Doctors are not God but Comrades-in-arms’ he pointed out that "During the epidemic, it is necessary for us to consider the role of doctors and the connotation of the doctor-patient relationship, so as to guide the two sides to reach a moral consensus on the nature of the doctor-patient relationship, and to extend the trust and harmonious relationship between doctors and patients in the epidemic still after it." 

 On this basis, Professor Liang Lizhi further clarified the nature of the doctor-patient relationship: "Doctors are a group of professionals who take proper medical measures for the benefit of patients. Over individual diseases and epidemic situations, they are the helpers who spare no effort to help patients recover and prolong their lives." 

Therefore, Mr. Liang Lizhi pointed out that doctors, as helpers, should try their best to help patients, but doctors are not gods who can intervene in life and death. Therefore, the role of helpers is to define the doctor's diagnosis and treatment responsibility from a deontological perspective, rather than the consequentialist perspective. In particular, during the epidemic, it is necessary to provide reliable safeguard measures for medical workers, so as to create a fair atmosphere of "deserve", instead of using morality to kidnap medical workers. It is the most important that, through this pandemic, both doctors and patients should realize that they are actually comrades-in-arms based on the diagnosis and treatment. They should thus change their ideas and understand it is significant for patients and doctors to fight against the disease hand-in-hand, clear each other’s different responsibilities involved, and remember this pandemic period fighting together as good moral education material in order to establish a harmonious doctor-patient relationship.

 The reflection on the doctor-patient relationship through the pandemic from Liang Lizhi has been highly recognized by medical workers, ethics circles and the public. “The doctor-patient relationship is essentially a comrade relationship based on the facts of diagnosis and treatment” provides a strong theoretical basis for medical ethics in the fight against COVID-19. This understanding not only provides strong support for the fight against the epidemic, but also provides a practical theoretical point for the establishment of a good doctor-patient relationship in China.