'Is she alive? Is she dead? Representations of chronic disorders of consciousness in Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma
Depictions of coma have come to dominate literary and filmic texts over the last half century, a phenomenon coinciding with advancements in medical technology that have led to remarkable increases in the survival rates of patients with chronic disorders of consciousness. Authors of coma fiction are preoccupied with the imagined subjective experience of coma, often creating complex, dream-like worlds from which the protagonist must escape if survival is to be achieved. However, such representations appear to conflict with medical case studies and patient narratives that reveal that most often survivors of coma have no recol...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 23, 2016 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Colbeck, M. Tags: Original article Source Type: research
Seeing illness in art and medicine: a patient and printmaker collaboration
For many patients, viewing one's illness through medical imaging technology can be an unsettling experience. Patients are likely not to see themselves represented in medical images and may find it difficult to reconcile this new image with their own body image. In this article, a patient with multiple sclerosis and a printmaker describe a collaborative project they have developed, wherein the patient's medical images are incorporated into pieces of fine art. The aim of the project is to open up the interpretation of the ill-body to persons outside the medical field, so as to do justice to the multiple dimensions of the bod...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 23, 2016 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Stahl, D., Stahl, D. G. Tags: Original article Source Type: research
The end of medical confidentiality? Patients, physicians and the state in history
Medical confidentiality has come under attack in the public sphere. In recent disasters both journalists and politicians have questioned medical confidentiality and claimed that in specific contexts physicians should be compelled to communicate data on their patients’ health. The murders of innocent individuals by a suicidal pilot and a Swiss convicted criminal have generated polemical debates on the topic. In this article, historical data on medical confidentiality is used to show that medical practices of secrecy were regularly attacked in the past, and that the nature of medical confidentiality evolved through tim...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 23, 2016 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Rieder, P., Louis-Courvoisier, M., Huber, P. Tags: Open access Original article Source Type: research
Curating the medical humanities curriculum: twelve tips
As the head of a university-wide health humanities programme and a consultant ‘Humanities Lead’ to our medical school, I am often asked how to build arts and humanities-based sessions within the formal medical curriculum, given that teaching schedules are already oversubscribed. In many medical schools, such sessions remain optional or elective and as a result, may be perceived as less important than ‘obligatory content’ by students and faculty. Shapiro has designated this as a form of acquiescence where such teaching becomes ‘ornamental’ to an essentially biomedical model.1 As Bates and...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 23, 2016 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Peterkin, A. Tags: Editorial Source Type: research
Freddy on the floor
"Hey doc, my flea bites come back," Freddy all wide-eyed, arm all blood and pus and star-spangled blue, frets from his wrist on up like a song sung over again: to the drumbeats of his old man's shoe on his head, to the baseline of his old lady nagging at his dreams, Freddy sang his song on through, now Freddy's on the floor again. "Hey Freddy, this gonna be the last time?" And he smiled and squeezed parched lips in time let a slow hum rise from behind like a ghost, Freddy with no force sang of tears and hope and tears and blow, the beats fell on, the baseline flew I hear Freddy on the floor again. "You gotta hea...
Source: Medical Humanities - May 23, 2016 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Barot, N. Tags: Poetry and prose Source Type: research
