For most of us laypeople, a visit to a hospital is not particularly a pleasant experience.  For starters, the main reason we go to a hospital is because we are sick (or to check whether we are sick, or to prevent becoming sick).  Sometimes treatments or tests involve something painful.  But there is something else: the manner we get treated as patients.  In other words, we are often dehumanized as patients.
  “Dehumanization” may be a strong word that should be reserved for such atrocities as terrorism or massacre.  But if you think about it, patient treatment involves subtle forms of dehumanization.  More specifically, we often get treated as something less than a human being an organic machine with an elaborate but faulty mechanism that needs to be fixed.  It does not matter whether it has the capacity to think or feel.  It almost feels like no one really “cares” or is genuinely concerned about your well-being. 
  But such dehumanization in healthcare is not attributable to malignancy on anyone’s part.  Psychological research has shown that it happens rather frequently, is often not borne out of intentional or even conscious thinking, and can actually be beneficial to the healthcare professionals as well as the patients.  Caring less about the patient’s thoughts and feelings enables healthcare professionals to focus on the symptoms and the underlying medical causes.  Maybe more importantly, it prevents stress and psychological fatigue that often follows too much rapport with the patient.
  However, dehumanization is not something that takes place only in the healthcare sector.  Research presents mounting evidence that dehumanizing can happen in everyday life by ordinary people.  For example, when people have power over others, they tend to think of their subordinates as tools they can use to attain their goals.  Some men have the tendency to view women merely as sex objects, reducing women to their body parts.  Extreme capitalism may also promote dehumanization, by encouraging excessive competitiveness, social hierarchies, and power inequalities.  Dehumanization is a convenient psychological tool to explain and justify inequality, discrimination, and other social injustices.  Maybe, we are all unknowingly taking part in infinitesimal portions of inhuman cruelties every day, both as perpetrators and as victims.
  In sum, there are inevitable cases of dehumanization (such as in healthcare), but there are others that are harmful and avoidable.  We can start from little things to change this; for example, greeting store clerks and bus drivers with a smile, refraining from focusing on people’s appearances and their ‘uses’ to us, and in general treating each other with more empathy and compassion.  Ultimately, we should constantly evaluate our system and check whether it promotes dehumanization of its members, and attempt to make changes if necessary.  No one knows if it is even possible to make a society where everyone treats each other as equal humans, but it may be a worthy goal to pursue.