Listen to the following passage. Write a short summary of 150 to 200 words of what you have heard. You may need to take some no

Well, my topic today is the doctor-patient relationship. If you come in and the doctor doesn’t shake your hand, the doctor doesn’t meet your eye, the doctor is looking at the clock, the telephone is ringing, and the secretary is coming in, this is not a doctor you can have a healing relationship with. Can you say to him, "Doctor, put that phone down; you’re looking at me"? It’s not likely that you will choose such doctors.
    All of us may have to see the doctor sometimes. We know the symptoms in what calls itself the best medical system in the world: the receptionist is more interested in our insurance than in our pain... We can often feel that our examination, such as it is, is being conducted by that blinking machinery. What we’re missing is the educated touch, the cocked head of a real doctor listening to your heartbeat, listening for your spirit. Without that human recognition, as one patient said, I’m nothing but my illness.
    I’m talking about one of the critical relationships in life, a relationship which many people would say is beyond saving. This doctor-patient relationship, can this thing be saved? Is this the last requiem for a dying breed? Or should we call young doctors to a new standard? Can it be done?
    The answer is categorically yes, because it must. Because otherwise we can’t get medicine. Because medicine is not merely science, medicine is not only curing, but it’s also healing. And healing requires the type of medicine that we are espousing. And if that is lost, medicine becomes a technology and is deprofessionalized; and that is what we’re aiming to halt. In part the crisis in medicine began with doctors distancing themselves from patients.
    The more critical work of a doctor happens not from lab tests, not from anything that you can measure with a needle, or a number, but in the taking of the human history. Which is, of course, one of the patient’s biggest -- I mean, we’re all longing for somebody to take our history and see it whole -- mind, body, spirit -- well or ill.
    Listening is the most important and most difficult single transaction. Most difficult, because it takes time. There is no substitute. And the moment you start by not giving time, you cannot listen. And listening is not merely with the ears: listening is with your total being. And the fact of the matter is, the studies, carded out in Britain and other places, show that 75% of all the valuable information that leads to correct diagnosis comes from the history. Another 10% comes from the physical examination, 5% comes from simple laboratory tests, and 5% comes from all the complex technology that you’re launched against, and sometimes for, the patient. So listening is vital, because listening is not merely listening, but to establish a relationship.
    But some people think listening is inefficient. Because if you get all the information in this least costly way, immediately, you don’t have to report to numerous specialists, and you don’t have to engage in complex and costly technologies, you don’t launch drags that create adverse reactions and require hospitalization and a whole array of consequentialities ensue.
    So the doctor sees the patient for ten minutes, the doctor focuses on only one thing -- the chief complaint. And the chief complaint may have nothing to do with what brings the patient to the doctor. This type of doctoring is essential, because 80% of all problems that come to doctors are trivial.
    The problem is, the doctor isn’t there, because the doctor doesn’t want to listen. He’s afraid to listen, he doesn’t know how to listen, he hasn’t been trained how to listen, there’s no premium on listening, there’s no reward for listening.
    Even so, the doctor-patient relationship is not beyond saving. I’m an incorrigible optimist, because time and time again, the American people, if they begin to understand what good health is all about, what is good health? And good health begins first and foremost with caring. If you don’t care for a patient, be somebody else, but don’t be a doctor!