A few weeks ago our first year students were thinking about patient confidentiality and it was my task to facilitate the process. The group I was with were from diverse cultural backgrounds and from several different countries, including the UK. Whilst they all readily grasped the idea of respecting confidentiality as a way of respecting […]
Category: Blog
“In Praise of Hypochondria” by Miles Little and Claire Hooker
We have been discussing the role of the humanities in medical education, and the need to account for what one of us calls ‘medical paranoia’. By this we mean the tendency that medical students (and practising doctors) have to think that they have developed serious illnesses, making self-diagnoses frequently based on vague suggestions rather than […]
Saving Momma Boone’s Blushes: a Cutting Edge look at Obese Bodies
Are you watching carefully? Then I’ll begin. I’ll show you how you think and feel about fat bodies. Really fat bodies, the one’s that get doctors and politicians vexed, the ones that their owners sometimes hide away from public view, the ones that no one wants to own. Make yourself comfortable, line up those TV-time […]
Saying goodbye to patients: a GP’s perspective
I’ve spent the last few weeks saying goodbye to my patients, letting them know, that after eight years, I will no longer be their GP. I don’t tell every patient I see, but instead restrict myself to telling those with whose care I’ve been more intimately involved in and those whom I’m advising to come […]
UNESCO sex education guidelines spark controversy : could medical humanities help?
According to UNESCO there are 111 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases among people ages 10 to 24 globally each year. In addition, 4.4 million women age 15 to 19 seek abortions each year. As part of their on-going programme to try to improve this situation, and with a strong focus on trying to reduce […]
What if you haven’t got a flu friend?
There are always, within the population, individuals who have no one to collect medicines for them when they are ill. The group predominantly affected are the elderly but, especially in a situation in which a significant proportion of the population is affected by a flu pandemic, there will be others. In normal circumstances we have a […]
How does this painting make you feel?
There’s an old adage in medicine that if being with a patient makes you feel depressed then there’s a good chance that person is themselves depressed. So how does this painting make you feel? Depressed, or hopeful? Safe, or vulnerable? Alone, or observed? […]
Homelessness: what’s the right response?
Over the weekend, mixed with the harrowing coverage of the loss of soldiers’ lives in Afghanistan, and for news cycle reasons I’ve inadequate information to understand, the fate of London’s homeless population prior to the 2012 Olympics was discussed on television and in print. The organising committee of the London Games had apparently committed itself […]
In the UK government’s dystopian world patients told to ‘hang on’
If you want to refresh your memory of the comings and goings in Geroge Eliot’s classic, Middlemarch, then look no further than Professor Rosin’s analysis in the June 2009 issue of Medical Humanities. http://mh.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/35/1/43?q=w_mh_current_tab If you want to follow a contemporary equivalent of medical marketplace machinations then you need look no further than what is […]
Swine flu comes home: a GP’s tale
So there we were, early Wednesday afternoon, preparations under way for the evening surgeries, when the phones started to ring off the hook. Almost simultaneously we got an email from the PCT telling us that 143 children from the local primary and infant schools were sick with an as yet unidentified viral illness. Some were […]