Blog by Leah Teresa Rosen “Invisible illnesses”—like chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and other conditions that cannot be reliably measured or quantified—present a unique challenge to clinicians and caretakers alike. In American culture, we operate under the idea that seeing is believing, almost to a fault. We should not have to witness or experience something first-hand before […]
Tag: Blog
Beyond Physical and Psychological Health: Philosophical Health
Blog by Luis de Miranda We think we know what physical health and psychological health are, but what is philosophical health and why should it matter? The phrase “physical health” is nowadays considered self-evident. However, it became part of modern discourse only in the nineteenth century, along the publication of manuals such as Health Made […]
NHS in Critical Condition
Blog by Pam Kleinot Former journalist and psychotherapist, and producer of ‘Under the Knife’ (Directed by Susan Steinberg, UK 2019). I was inspired to produce ‘Under the Knife’ by my father, a doctor who worked at the largest state hospital in Southern Africa. He always told me how wonderful the NHS was. It is one […]
Noah Webster, Yellow Fever, and the First U.S. Medical Journal
Blog by Richard Kahn Yellow Jack, Yellow Plague, Bronze John – these words struck terror in the citizens of a newly formed republic. Yellow fever in the 1790s was a “disease of unknown cause, curious almost haphazard spread, short duration, and often a high fatality rate. It died out soon after a frost and did […]
Prioritizing Justice in the U.S. Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Blog by Sarah E. Rowan, Michelle Haas, Lilia Cervantes, Kellie Hawkins, Lilian Barahona Vargas, David Duarte-Corado, Alonzo Ryan and Carlos Franco-Paredes Days ago, a clinician in Denver looked with anger at a patient who laid dying in the ICU. “Why didn’t she access care earlier? There are resources available and now she’s dying!” The patient […]
The Concept of ‘Illness Without Disease’ Impedes Understanding of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Response to Sharpe and Greco
Article Summary by Steven Lubet and David Tuller Today we present the very last of MH essays on CFS. The medical condition known as “chronic fatigue syndrome” has often been presumed to be primarily caused by psychological and behavioural factors, and therefore “reversible” by cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or graded exercise therapy (GET). In 2015, […]
The Value of Evaluation: Differential Attainment Initiatives for BAME Trainees
Blog by Sharon Yip Talk of access to public institutions such as healthcare has been amplified in recent months, due to the Black Lives Matter movement. However, less discussion has been focussed on internal access for staff members working within medicine. Many initiatives aim to improve access to medical education and reduce differential attainment for […]
Trauma–Aware Care
Blog by Lily Kim While chairing Holocaust Education Week (UJA Federation) and leading Equity for the Canadian Disability Studies Association (CDSA), I recognized the need to reconcile diverse intersectional perspectives in Canada. The current situation is widely viewed as a healthcare crisis brought about by the COVID-19 virus. However, the pandemic has revealed the existential […]
Crisis
Blog by D. Brendan Johnson Medicine is at home among crises. Hippocrates, or one of his disciples, in the Corpus Hippocraticum was one of the first to conceptualize a crisis as a medical reality, and it was a concept upon which Galen would build and thereby preserve for 1500 years. For these classical physicians, the […]
Apologies Alone Won’t Solve Structural Racism: We Need a Reckoning with the Racist Roots of U.S. Medicine
Response by Jacqueline Antonovich, Rana Hogarth, Elise Mitchell, Graham Mooney, Ayah Nuriddin, Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Kylie Smith, Christopher Willoughby and Alexandre White Recently, JAMA’s Clinical Reviews podcast recorded an episode with the Twitter headline: No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care? The tweet is now deleted, and JAMA […]