--that the training most docs get--or at least most used to get, as this is supposed to be slowly changing in the new medical curricula--is specifically slanted towards treating the condition, not the "whole patient".

I have a good podiatrist friend (semi-retired) who tells me this was quit explicitly stated when he went to school; basically the idea is that you have to be detatched from feelings about the patient in order to make sound clinical and treatment judgments. If you empathize with the patient, you may be swayed from recommending the "best" treatment, especially when this treatment is more invasive or more painful. And, if the prognosis is not good, if you allow yourself to feel for the patient, well, then, you may just be too overwhelmed to make good medical decisions. Therefore, it behooves you to have as little emotional interaction with your patients as possible, and you should not encourge them to be emotional with you; one of the ways of doing this is to be as formal and "expert" as possible. Don't laugh, don't make small talk.

I can see the logic of this, but I disagree with the starting premise (that empathy gets in the way of medical judgment).

I also suspect that are a LOT of other things that constrain doctors from making the soundest medical judgments that are not in the realm of emotions--things like pharmaceutical representatvies and health maintenance organization bean-counters--that the medical profession is reluctant to acknowledge. So training docs to be detached for the reason of applying sound medical judgment begs the question.

Fortunately, the opinion does seem to be changing--many younger doctors seem to be trained somewhat differently now, and there are those older gems we occassionaly find. But, given the likelihood that we'll hit somebody who either purposely or inadvertantly won't interact well, it's still a good idea, especially in serious situations, to have that advocate or "wingperson" there to add perspective and dimension, and to push for more info and question-answering.