Since Hippocrates in early 5 B.C., Medicine has carried an ‘angel on its shoulder’; a reflexive gaze on the skill, and phenomenologies of healing between the doctor and his patient. Ethics is a code, a practice, and a guide amid the terrain of the hands that tend to the body using instruments of medicine’s enterprise. Referring to the Oath:

‘I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts’.

Daniel Sokol, Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College, London and recently qualified barrister, undertook the challenge of fitting ‘ethics’ into our contemporary medical practice; whereby Medicine is confronted by a body unprecedented in relation to the ways in which we can perceive, examine, intervene, create, and prolong the existence of our bodies; our lives.

more…

Telling the Patient’s Story details a theatre company’s attempts to develop medical students’ case presentation skills. Workshops, covering everything from improvisation, personal monologues and body language, had a marked effect on the students, with all participants agreeing that the training improved their delivery of patient histories.

http://mh.bmj.com/content/37/1/18.abstract

So, the arts and humanities can help medical students improve their case presentation skills thereby, in theory, benefitting future patients. Sounds like convincing evidence of the value of the humanities within the medical curriculum. Everyone happy? Well, not quite. One student offered the following feedback:

“[There is] too much focus on how this relates to medicine. We will realise that later.”

more…

Care infuses medicine. Well, the word ‘care’ infuses the language of medicine – Healthcare, Intensive Care, Palliative Care, Standard care, Standard of care, Best supportive care, Care Quality Commission. But what actually is medical care? more…

SAATCHI GALLERY 27th October 2010 – 17th April 2011

A few weeks ago I visited the new exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery with my group of 4^th year King’s College Medical Students. Visits to galleries, museums and art installations are an integral part of the ‘The Good Doctor’ Special Study Module but I hadn’t included the Saatchi Gallery before.  Modern conceptual art is challenging and I was uncertain how this visit would help in our exploration of medical matters. I need not have worried; our visit was enjoyable, reassuringly accessible and it was easy to make links to the theme of goodness in contemporary medical practice.

Newspeak Two on display in the large bright rooms at the Saatchi Gallery, King’s Road, London continues the showcase of contemporary British Art started in June 2010 with Newspeak One.  All the original exhibits, including the widely advertised Pink Cher by Scott King, have been replaced and the new collection opened at the end of October.  Charles Saatchi’s Sensation! exhibition (Royal Academy 1997) had – sensationally -  brought late 20th century British Art to public notice. This was the outing of Damian Hirst’s shark, Tracey Emin’s unmade bed, Mark Quinn’s blood sculptures, Chris Ofili’s ingenious uses of elephant dung and the Chapman Brothers doing what they do best – shocking us into a reaction.  So what would we make of Newspeak? more…

This write up will share the experiences of an educational intervention with a difference.  It narrates the story from a medical school located at the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. For the annual day celebrations of this school, the faculty used to host a cultural show as a mark of their love and reverence to the students. The cultural performances used to take different forms, ranging from songs, skits, dances and a lot more. On this year’s annual day, they decided to perform something unique. The movement was spearheaded by microbiologists who incidentally had many of their members involved in medical education research and cultural coordination committee.  A meeting was convened and the medium of theatre and dance was finalized to depict certain educational themes.  As usual, the process gained momentum just two days before the event. more…

This week, life as a general practitioner has been a little too exciting for my liking, and far too eventful for my patients- young and old- around whom this unnecessary and unwelcome excitement has centred. Twice in as many days I’ve had to call, in the middle of a surgery, for an ambulance, and to answer yes to the question of whether I want it to be an all dancing all singing blue lights flashing affair. more…

After spending some time away from medicine, I return to find that there seems to be a surreptitious, mysterious pandemic infiltrating the junior doctors that practice medicine in the United Kingdom. The cause of this pandemic has largely been overlooked but recent research can now confirm the existence and rampancy of the condition, which can now be revealed as Robotisism. Although the mechanism remains unclear it is thought that Robotisism metamorphose human doctors into machine like –robots programmed to solely perform tasks. They may look like the epitome of the healthy doctor, but closer inspection reveal that they are far from this. more…