I'd like some help for a panel discussion next week on "What makes a good doctor". My weekly reading of the BMJ online (which I access through a university library) yields a spate of articles, and over 70 criteria and still counting. An epidemiologist proposed "a doctor who is interested not only in the individual patient but also in the likely health of other relevant people. This of course recalls the poem of the 6 blind Hindoo scholars describing an elephant (qg, which is shorthand for "google this for more", similar to qv). A coffee-time discussion today foussed on whether a doctor should be "touchy-feely" or not. The answer is, of course, it all depends. No for an intensivist at the bedside of a gravely ill patient, yes when s/he is talking to the relatives about possible outcomes of proposed treatments or withholding them. There is of course William Osler's Aequanimitas, which advises emotional detachment. Are there other useful talking points like "touchy-feely" to convince or suggest to other panelists and the audience that the truth is rarely simple - but sometimes it is? Michael P. retired surgeon