READINGS FOR CULTURAL ASPECTS OF CLINICAL MEDICINE

Spring, 2012

 

Part 1

 

Syllabus

 

Week 1: Jan 17

 

Introduction to Cultural Aspects of Clinical Medicine 

 

BusinessWeek online: Medical Guesswork

 

Fleisher: Hands On

 

Goodwin: Culture and Medicine

 

Blumhagen: The Doctor’s White Coat

 

 

 

Week 2: Jan 24

The Culture of the Emergency Room

 

Grim: How to Crack a Chest

 

Lazare: Shame and Humiliation in the Medical Encounter

 

Transue: Shreds of a Flowered Shirt

 

Dahlberg and Reese: Investigative Report: Deaths in ER’s sparking concern

 

 

 

Week 3: Jan 31

Health and Disease

 

The Social Construction of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

 

Kleinman: What is Specific to Biomedicine?

 

 

 

Week 4: Feb 7

Illness and Sickness

 

Frank: The Cost of Appearances

 

Cassell: The Nature of Suffering

 

Trillin: Of Dragons and Garden Peas

 

Broyard: Intoxicated by my Illness

 

 

 

Week 5: Feb 14

Social and Cultural Influences on Health and Malady

 

Pachter: Culture and Clinical Care

 

Carmichael: The Great Divide

Landau: How Medicine is Advancing Beyond Race

Watters: The Americanization of Mental Illness

 

 

 

Week 6: Feb 21

A Scorecard

 

The Hospitalist

Brown: Physician, Heel Thyself

 

Burrows: The Man Who Didn’t Know He Had Cancer

 

Angell: Drug Companies and Doctors

 

 

 

Week 7: Feb 28

Healing Thoughts

 

Rodkin: The New Doctors

 

Gianakos: Alternative Healer

 

Strathern and Stewart: Illness and the Emotions

 

 

 

Week 8: Mar 6

 

On Becoming a Doctor

 

Detsky: The Art of Pimping

 

Millett: Doctors with Borders

Gawande: Education of a Knife

Verghese: Culture Shock—Patient as Icon, Icon as Patient

 

 

Part 2

Week 10: Mar 20

Examining Doctors

 

Broyard: Doctor, Talk to Me

 

Jonsen: Watching the Doctor

 

Groopman: Surgery and Satisfaction

 

 

 

Week 11: Mar 27

The Doctor and Patient Meet

 

Gawande: Naked

 

Safran: Patients’ Trust in Their Doctors: Are We Losing Ground?

 

Verghese: Lives; Close Encounter of the Human Kind

 

Churchill and Schenk: Healing Skills for Medical Practice

 

 

 

Week 12: Apr 3

Patients and Their Problems

 

Sanghavi: The Phantom Menace of Sleep Deprived Doctors

 

Carey: In the Hospital, a Degrading Shift From Person to Patient

 

Gawande: The Bell Curve

Raloff: July: When Not to Go to the Hospital

 

 

 

Week 13: Apr 10

Cultural Aspects of Clinical Medicine

 

Chen: The Informal Curriculum

 

Hunter: “There was this one guy...” The Uses of Anecdotes in Medicine

 

 

Steiner and Earnest: Lingua Medica: The Language of Medicine-Taking

 

Hess: We’ll Replace the Valve

 

 

 

Week 14: Apr 17

Medicine and Culture

 

Fishman, Ten Have and Casarett: Cancer and the Media

Bellafante: ‘Boston Med’; In Hospitals the Reality is Real

 

Nuland: Whoops!

 

Roan: On TV, plastic surgery shows its best face

 

 

 

Week 15: Apr 24

Cultural Change in Medicine

 

Gawande: On Washing Hands

 

Levinson and Lurie: When Most Doctors Are Women

Hawn: Take Two Aspirin and Tweet Me in the Morning

 

Goldstein: As Doctors Get a Life, Strains Show

 

Kahn: Etiquette-Based Medicine