Medicine is a field in which people are dealing with people, that is why preoccupations regarding the best solution to having competent professionals are justified more than in other fields of activity. The tendency we are seeing nowadays is to push medicine to the frontiers of more and more sophisticated technology. Undoubtedly, there are huge benefits for the patients, but the danger is to let aside the non-technical skills a doctor needs in order to cope with illness. Previous studies have showed that patients tend to rank doctors’ interpersonal skills equally with their technical skills. Nevertheless, the curricula of the medical schools still lack the lectures necessary to equip future doctors with proper knowledge. Our study aims at assessing the idea of a good doctor in the general population. In order to do this, people will be asked to name and rank the abilities they consider to be most important at a doctor from their perspective.

Specific objectives:

• to identify the desired traits of a good doctor
• to rank the desired traits of a good doctor
• inform medical schools on the importance of complex student training (technical, communication, ethics etc.)
• make doctors more conscious about the importance of the way they relate to patients