5 May, 12 | by Ayesha Ahmad
As medicine evolves, or rather reveals, nuances that speak of an inherent interdisciplinary nature, how are we to recognise and become accustomed with voices other than the language of textbooks; the sounds of monitors and machines; and the neutral tone of the doctor to patient dialogue?
What happens when the patient hears God?
12 Feb, 12 | by Ayesha Ahmad
It is not so often in our contemporary clinical environment that the passages of the soul find quiet refuge. What we believe (with)in has been overturned by what we can know, as if knowing brings meaning. We know that we shall die but it does not tell us what our death will mean.
9 Feb, 12 | by Ayesha Ahmad
The next Centre for Humanities and Health seminar will take place on 7th March, 6pm in K0.31 (the Small Committee Room on the Strand Campus)
Dr Sam Alberti of the Royal College of Surgeons of England will present a talk entitled ‘The past, present and future of medical museums’
All are welcome and there is no need to RSVP.
18 Dec, 11 | by Ayesha Ahmad
The 10th Annual Meeting for the Medical Humanities Consortium (MHC) ‘Hospitals, Healthcare, and the Medical Humanities’ has been scheduled for May 15th-16th 2012 and will be held at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, 4401 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224.
There is still time to submit a proposal – deadline is December 20, 2012:
2 Nov, 11 | by Deborah Kirklin
Medicine Unboxed is an annual one-day conference which brings together an inspirational blend of expertise in health care, philosophy, ethics, law, sociology, politics, art, film, and literature. The aim of the this year’s conference, held in October, was to explore medicine’s values through the lens of the arts and humanities; considering medical practice and policy within modern society, as well as experiential aspects of health and illness. In considering values in medicine, three main themes arose; the personal values of patients and medical professionals, societal values, and value for money within health care and the NHS. more…
21 Sep, 11 | by Ayesha Ahmad
Can you treat a person’s story? At present, amid the setting of the 14th International Philosophy and Psychiatry conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, I am not alone in trying to peer through the looking-glass, searching for the heart of the humanity in medicine, and for a treasure, that will surely tell us what we should find when we excavate the depths of our minds and our enquiring empathy?
So, the story unfolds. How do we define and classify who amongst us is a psychiatric patient?
When we use the term ‘psychiatry’, we are referring to the ‘medical treatment of the mind’; to heal. But is it not the case that sometimes pain is an exploration of who we are? When the mind is the heart, the emotional seat for pain, perhaps we can learn to understand who I am and who you are from such a unique vantage point? These questions, situated in the context of a philosophical reflection on psychiatry, on human experience, illustrates that there are different forms of pain; and to these, there needs to be a poetic; a language of the mind.
13 Aug, 11 | by Ayesha Ahmad
Since the time of Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician, who is regarded as the “Father of Medicine,” medicine and the humanities have been interwined with all human beings in all cultures through a shared and common desire to heal.
Sometimes though, the very fatality and mortality that gives rise to our existential meanings; our ethereal existences, collide in the most turbulent and violent of ways. This is what happened to James Borton, who teaches writing at the University of South Carolina Sumter.
27 Jul, 11 | by Ayesha Ahmad
A recent viewing at the Menier Gallery of Deborah Padfield’s ‘Mask: Mirror: Membrane’ exhibition of images produced from experiences of facial pain, plunged my own experience into that of the perceiver of pain.
In collaboration with Professor Joanna Zakrzewska, facial pain patients, and clinicians from UniversityCollege London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Deborah Padfield asked an important question:
Can you see Pain?
14 Apr, 11 | by Ayesha Ahmad
The 2011 International Symposium shall take place on Saturday the 7th of May. It will be held at the Medical Teaching Centre, Building 37, University of Warwick Gibbet Hall Campus.
30 Mar, 11 | by Deborah Kirklin
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…
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