Human nature or human disease: it’s not like a standard product. You can’t have a general rule by a professional body saying that this is what everyone should do because no two patients are the same, no two doctors are the same or have the same experiences.

Doctors always, if patients are suffering, they give them enough to alleviate their misery. And sometimes when the main aim is to alleviate their misery, it can sometimes happen that they may end up shortening their lives. But the whole ethos of medicine is that it must be in the patient’s interest.

With increasing specialisation, doctors became more and more involved in the scientific aspect of their discipline. I am myself a retired neurosurgeon and as a neurosurgeon I’m so busy doing the highly specialised treatment procedures that I have to do that I don’t look after my patient throughout his illness. They come to a neurosurgeon or say any specialist, and they go back to whoever sent them.

Because responsibility for overall care is divided, particularly in teaching hospitals, students don’t see one chap looking after the whole illness. Therefore they have a rather biased view of what the practice of medicine is.

That explains the trend that says that doctors must communicate more with their patients, have a greater understanding. It’s being stressed now; but it should have normal practice all along.