Increasing effort is being put into selecting, training, and controlling doctors while public confidence in them is declining, litigation is increasing and the media are reporting more failures in healthcare. The profession is pressed for more objectivity by a society that is increasingly driven by its feelings. We have objective selection of medical students, objective examinations, continuing professional development, evidence based medicine, management protocols and clinical governance. Doctors are to be re-accredited at intervals throughout their careers.

This pattern of control works well in business and industry. For medicine the ingredient lacking is motivation. Only 1 % of recent medical graduates feel medicine is a vocation. The 99% are not be blamed - doctors are not a breed apart, genetically engineered for the task (at least not yet). They are the product of the culture and society for whose health they are responsible. When we point a finger at a doctor who has failed we point three fingers back at ourselves.

The personnel secretary of a Christian mission reported it was a privilege to interview medical candidates: 'they are looking for the opportunity to express their faith in the work they do'. They are people centred because they belong to a culture centred on the God who sent his Son to care for those he made to be like him.