ABSTRACT
Medicine is essentially an anthropology, and the patient role is characterized by integrity and subjectivity. With the progress of science and technology and social development, the contemporary patient role has become alienated. The specific manifestations of patient role alienation were analyzed from four aspects, including the objectification of the patient role and the blurring of the patient boundaries in sociology, the objectification of the patient role and the indexing of patients’ pain in technology, the challenge of patient life and health rights and the alienation of informed consent rights in law, and the instrumentalization of patient role and the fragility of patient subjectivity in economics. This paper proposed that the coordination of technology and humanities, the return to the nature of patients, and the concern for the needs of patients are essential in the development of modern medicine.