Overall, medical practice is carried out when doctors identify health problems, such as illnesses, mental disorders, and physical injuries, and provide treatments to patients to properly cure them of their illnesses. Medical practice should be based on science – in particular, scientific research focused on discovering medical treatments –, on ethical considerations regarding the well-being of patients that limit science, and on intuition. However, since science is limited by ethical considerations and scientific evidence is sometimes unavailable, the most important basis should be doctors' intuition influenced by their past medical experience. Overall, science plays an important role in the realm of medicine, as it is the basis for the creation of new treatments and the advancement of healing ability in the medical field. Science is defined as a field of knowledge based on discovering the truth about nature through formulating hypotheses and conducting research objectively (Ehrenreich 19-20). The scientific research aspect is significant because as more diseases and other medical conditions are identified, scientists must determine possible treatments and develop medicines for doctors to treat their patients. For example, neuroscientist VS Ramachandran recounts how patients suffering from “reflex sympathetic dystrophy” participated in a scientific experiment that tested whether there was a way to cure the unremitting pain associated with the syndrome (17). As a result of scientific research, a new and effective treatment for RSD sufferers was discovered when patients' pain disappeared and mobility returned to their limbs after undergoing a procedure that used mirrors (18). Through the powers of science, variu...... middle of paper ......ck competence, sincerity, or diligence, but because they must make decisions about tremendously complex problems with very little hard evidence available to support them" (Kumar and Nash 82-83). Although intuitive errors may be made, some of these are due to the fact that the discovery of new disorders is continuous and that humanity does not yet understand everything about how diseases and biological systems work it has not yet been perfected and is why the field of medicine is still attempting to discover new and innovative ways to treat diseases and other medical conditions. While there may be some issues regarding individual doctors and their abnormal choices, overall the appropriate foundation for medical practice is a combination of the three aspects of science, ethical considerations and informed intuition.