Patients will expect to be treated as "equal partners" in the future, demanding more information, involvement in decisions about treatment and respect for their views.
The editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr Richard Smith, told doctors at the WONCA medical conference that patients as partners in care would be "one of the big drivers of change" in health care.
"It seems to me that treating patients as co-equal partners is really the only way it can be; how did it get to be any other way? How is it some doctors see patients as the enemy - people who demand too much and get them up in the middle of the night?"
Dr Smith said doctors brought significant qualities to a consultation, including knowledge, skill and experience. "But, at the end of the day, the patient is in charge of his or her body."
Addressing the conference's theme, "People and their Family Doctors - Partners in Care", he asked why doctors were reluctant to accept the conclusion that only patients could define the quality of care given.
He warned doctors that increasingly patients were going to arrive in surgeries "with a wadge of stuff from the Internet". The idea that doctors needed complex information and patients simple information "is just plain wrong".
"Patients who have a chronic condition may want every last drop of information - whatever is available on the hottest, most detailed Web sites. In some cases, such as people with HIV, patients are getting smarter than doctors about their condition and the drug treatments used. It can be terrifying for some doctors but it should not be."
Dr Moira Stewart, director of the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, said the key to a successful patient-doctor relationship started with something as simple as listening.
"Successful medical practice involves more than just diagnosing and treating a patient's symptoms. A good physician listens to and understands the patient's experience of and feelings about the illness. The doctor-patient relationship is a partnership," said Dr Stewart, an epidemiologist.
She said a lack of respect by a physician could have very negative consequences for a patient. Sometimes all a patient needed was recognition of his or her suffering or simply the presence of a physician at a time of need.