Corporeality and training of health professionals

Abstract

Health professionals have conventionally received training that is based on a dualistic tradition which conceives of health as belonging to the realm of the natural sciences. Thus, their point of reference has been a body-object seen in terms of biology while ignoring the context in which individuals are immersed. Such training reproduces - within the arena of professional activity - an instrumental, subject-object (citizen-object) relationship. In order to go beyond this approach, a new way of thinking about the human condition is necessary. In this light, we suggest that the concept of corporeality
may enable us to think of the body as a socio-cultural construction. This also poses the challenge of sensitizing future health professionals and preparing them to read the world in the body, and bodies in the world, which in turn presupposes a subject-subject (citizen-citizen) relationship.