So how are you coping? Are you managing to make the right choices in these difficult times? And what if you make the wrong decision? Do you worry you might be sued, or worse still that the care people receive will suffer? And no, I’m not talking about the stresses and strains of clinical practice, […]
Latest articles
Medical humanities: what’s in it for patients?
So here’s the thing. No matter how interesting (or otherwise) medical school deans and research grant making bodies find the work done by medical humanities scholars and educators, the bottom line is (almost) always, what’s in it for patients? How will teaching students using art and literature make them better doctors; how will the insights […]
Medicine, Literature, Art and Music: Royal Society of Medicine, London 1st April 2009.
If you’re in the London region you might be interested in this symposium on medicine and the humanities. Focussing on literature, art and music it features some excellent speakers. In keeping with other RSM events, lively debate is sure to follow. http://www.rsm.ac.uk/academ/hsg106.php Venue: The Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 0AE Speakers to […]
Assembling Bodies: Art, Science and Imagination, Cambridge, UK
Atomised. Jim Bond. Animated Sculpture, 2005 Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is a wonderful research and teaching resource. It’s also has an exhibition space that’s open to the public. […]
Falling in love again: an artsy doc’s guide to surviving the recession
This Christmas I received a very special present from my husband. After 23 years I guess he knows a thing or two about how to get me excited and he knows just the man to do it. He also knew, as we must all surely know by now, that this was an austerity Christmas. […]
Association of Medical Humanities
So where do you go, bedsides straight to our very own journal, website and blog, if you’re a clinician, educator or academic in the UK and Ireland with an interest, or even just a fledgling curiosity, about medical humanities? To the Association of Medical Humanities of course. Following this link to the Association’s website to […]
Taking the Body Seriously: 6th Annual AMH Conference, Durham 6-8th July 2009
We live in a society obsessed with the body: the body perfect; the body far from perfect; the body as commodity- modified, objectified, sold on to the highest bidder; the body as art and as the inspiration for art; the body as a source of identity; and the disrupted or diseased body as the object […]
Wanted: 90 year old patient to look after ailing doctor
I’ve been ill. For two whole days. Horribly, gut wrenchingly, toilet bowl huggingly, head piercingly ill. For two whole days. So now I know what my patient felt like, right? The one who ‘gave’ this to me a few days ago when I visited her at home. The one who, in her 90th year, whilst […]
Book review: The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Helen Garner’s The Spare Room (published by Canongate) is an exploration of the emotional and practical turmoil engendered by caring for someone who is grasping at straws to evade the terminal truth of their illness. The narrative probes a friendship between two feisty women when it is taken to new levels of intensity by […]
Manners maketh the doctor
The other day I made a call to our local hospital to ask a colleague to see a patient of mine as a matter of urgency. I asked the switchboard operator to page the relevant on-call registrar who duly appeared on the other end of the line. Using “hello?” as his tense, inpatient, opening gambit […]