The Qualities of a Good Psychiatrist

Abstract

There are in the eyes of the world different sorts of ‘good’ psychiatrists. It depends who is making the judgement; it depends what is asked of the psychiatrist, what role he is expected to take and how successfully he has measured up to it. One would expect that the qualities of a doctor would be judged to a very large degree by his capacity to treat patients. This is what his long period of undergraduate and postgraduate training and education is about. Recently this concept of the doctor, and particularly that of consultant psychiatrist, has been challenged. The expectation that in the future he will continue to treat patients personally seems to be doubted. I wish to make my own attitude clear at the outset. The psychiatrist in my view is a physician in psychological medicine—a clinician—which means that his business and his professionalism are the personal care of patients. He is now called upon to do much more than this, and the reasons are several and complex. But the old view of a psychiatrist as physician may be lost if he accepts only the role of administrator, PR man, member of a multiprofessional team with far-ranging, ubiquitous responsibilities.