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Archivos de Medicina (Manizales)

2021, Number 2

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Arch Med 2021; 21 (2)

The decline of the White Coat: another effect of COVID-19?

Echeverry-Raad J

Language: Spanish
References: 57
Page: 611-619
PDF size: 673.15 Kb.


ABSTRACT

The purpose of this document is to reflect on some aspects that gave rise to and perpetuated the white coat as the standard of the medical profession, as well as the infectious risk that its use implies for doctors and patients, made more evident by the advent of the pandemic due to COVID-19, which threaten its future validity. The risk of contamination and cross infection of the white coat increases with the time of use.
This biological aspect adds to the social discredit experienced by medicine, which has been lost in its deontology and ethics due to the effects of the modernity of health systems. In transferring this lack of preeminence from the profession to its symbols, the white coat has lost to the imaginary the meaning of fitness, neatness and compassion that it is supposed to embody.
In a utilitarian framework, the white coat should participate in healing because of its symbolic placebo effect that overcomes the biological risk that it entails, something that is increasingly difficult.
While anti-contamination white coats are being conceived, the moment must come when, after the reestablishment of the framework of professional ethics, whether or not during health crises such as pandemics and due to genuine attitudes, health workers are seen “in white” since, paraphrasing, they heal and save a few times, they alleviate pain and suffering in another, but they listen with compassion, empathy, and always accompany and console (almost without expecting anything in return).


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