THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC INFLUENCE ON DOCTOR AND PATIENT SOCIAL INTERACTION

Abstract

Abstract. The modern realities of an unprecedented emergency situation caused by the spread of a new coronavirus infection have become a challenge to social institutions and, above all, healthcare, which could not but affect the social interaction of a doctor with patients. Aim is to identify the features of social interaction between a doctor and a patient in a pandemic. A review of fundamental and modern works in the problem field is carried out. The empirical basis of the work was the materials of a sociological survey using Google forms (N=420) and a focus group with doctors from the "red zone" (N=7). According to the data obtained, the majority of the interviewed doctors of the “red zone” consider the paternalistic model of relationship with the patient to be optimal for these conditions: it was noted by 86.7% (p<0.05 with the number of other answers). District therapists rated the paternalistic and partner models approximately equally (56.7% and 38.8%, respectively, p > 0.5). Moreover, the results of the survey made it possible to rank the personal qualities of doctors who, in their opinion, were most in demand to work in a pandemic. Patience (79.8%), "humanity" (78.7%) and conscientiousness (82.4%) ranked first in the number of selected answers; in second place are compassion (56.8%), a sense of duty (66.5%) and responsiveness (53.4%); in third place - responsibility (52.2%), a sense of justice (44.5%), "decency" (41.3%). The COVID-19 pandemic has shown national specific features of adaptation to changing waves of morbidity. In Russia, there has been a change in the attitude of society towards the professional group of doctors, which has led to the return of the paternalistic model. This was also facilitated by the vulnerability of patients in the older age group of the population, for which the expectations of paternalism are more characteristic, including as a manifestation of nostalgia for the image of a Soviet doctor and partly as a result of digital inequality against the backdrop of global digitalization.