Cicely Saunders, 'Total Pain and emotional evidence at the end of life
In this article I explore how Cicely Saunders championed the hospice movement and initiated what became palliative care by representing her emotional connections with others. She became friends (and, once or twice, fell in love) with dying patients and encouraged others to follow her example in listening to patients’ descriptions of pain. Her approach was radical at a time when she believed doctors routinely ‘deserted’ dying patients because it urged them to understand another’s embodied pain as inextricably bound up with the emotional impact of a terminal diagnosis. Saunders’ attention to how...
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Wood, J. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Pulling our lens backwards to move forward: an integrated approach to physician distress
We describe how complex phenomena have been tackled in other domains and discuss how holistic theory and the humanities may help in studying and addressing physician stress, with the ultimate goal of improving physician well-being and consequently patient care. (Source: Medical Humanities)
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: McQueen, S. A., Hammond Mobilio, M., Moulton, C.-a. Tags: Review essay Source Type: research
Womens voices, emotion and empathy: engaging different publics with 'everyday health histories
This article explores our experiences on a Wellcome Trust-funded project on women’s experiences of ‘everyday health’ in Britain between the 1960s and the 1990s. We explore issues around researching ‘everyday health’, including the generation and interpretation of source materials, and the role of empathy and emotion in interactions with different audiences as we share these materials in public engagement activities. We discuss three case studies of engagement activities to draw out potential uses of source materials and the responses of different audiences to these materials, and reflect on wh...
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Loughran, T., Mahoney, K., Payling, D. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Health, policy and emotion
Context and purpose Not so very long ago, the idea of publishing a special issue on the topic of healthcare, policy and the emotions might have seemed odd, ridiculous even. Healthcare and policy would certainly have sat happily enough together. After all, healthcare has always had a political dimension. It has never been a simple dyad of patient and practitioner. From its very inception, healthcare has been embedded in a complex web of relationships with community, civic and state authority. Faced with devastating epidemic (as well as endemic) disease, ancient, medieval and early modern cities sought to harness medical kno...
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Arnold-Forster, A., Brown, M., Moulds, A. Tags: Editor's choice Editorial Source Type: research
Fatherlessness, sperm donors and 'so what? parentage: arguing against the immorality of donor conception through 'world literature
Is biology and knowing biological ancestral information essential to the construction of identity? Bioethicist James David Velleman believes this is the case and argues that donor gamete conception is immoral because a portion of genetic heritage will be unknown. Velleman is critical of sperm donation and the absence of a biological father in donor-assisted families. His bioethical work, specifically the 2005 article ‘Family History’, is oft-cited in articles debating the ethics surrounding gamete donations and diverse family formations. However, I wonder to what extent Velleman’s ethical stance is exhibi...
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Halden, G. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Temporal technologies of epidemics
This article thus attempts to create a framework for understanding the epidemic experience in temporal terms by using ‘temporal technologies’ as an analytical tool. (Source: Medical Humanities)
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Wigen, E., Azak, A. N., Eskild, I., Jordeim, H., Lie, A. K., Yerlioglu, A. E., Ytreberg, E. Tags: COVID-19 Original research Source Type: research
In critique of anthropocentrism: a more-than-human ethical framework for antimicrobial resistance
This article concludes by arguing that a useful AMR ethics framework needs to consider and take seriously non-human others as an integral part of both health and disease in any given ecology. (Source: Medical Humanities)
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Canada, J. A., Sariola, S., Butcher, A. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
'The time is out of joint: temporality, COVID-19 and graphic medicine
This article aims to theorise the human experiences of time during the lockdown (in the first phase of the pandemic) and the COVID-19 pandemic through the verbo-visual exposition of graphic medicine that combines the medium of comics and healthcare. The event of the pandemic has not only bifurcated our perception of time in terms of a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ but also complicated our awareness and experience of time. Put differently, an epochal transformation caused by pandemics has shifted our temporal experience from the calendar/clock time to a queer time situated outside of formal time-related co...
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Venkatesan, S., Joshi, I. A. Tags: COVID-19 Original research Source Type: research
Phenomenological physiotherapy: extending the concept of bodily intentionality
This study clarifies the need for a renewed account of the body in physiotherapy to fill sizable gaps between physiotherapeutical theory and practice. Physiotherapists are trained to approach bodily functioning from an objectivist perspective; however, their therapeutic interactions with patients are not limited to the provision of natural-scientific explanations. Physiotherapists’ practice corresponds well to theorisation of the body as the bearer of original bodily intentionality, as outlined by Merleau-Ponty and elaborated upon by enactivists. We clarify how physiotherapeutical practice corroborates Merleau-Ponty&...
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Halak, J., Kriz, P. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
COP27 climate change conference: urgent action needed for Africa and the world
Wealthy nations must step up support for Africa and vulnerable countries in addressing past, present and future impacts of climate change The 2022 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a dark picture of the future of life on earth, characterised by ecosystem collapse, species extinction and climate hazards such as heatwaves and floods.1 These are all linked to physical and mental health problems, with direct and indirect consequences of increased morbidity and mortality. To avoid these catastrophic health effects across all regions of the globe, there is broad agreement—as 231 health journals...
Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Zielinski, C., On behalf of the authorship group listed below Tags: Open access Editorial Source Type: research
Imagining a post-antibiotic era: a cultural analysis of crisis and antibiotic resistance
This article stems from a public debate concerning the global increase of antibiotic resistance; and will examine how the concept of fantasy and imagination is central in picturing such a future crisis in society. The article’s empirical basis mainly consists of reports from global and Swedish organisations, dating from the 1990s and onwards. These fantasies show that our society has a strong urge to always try to understand and explain present time and to identify how ‘our’ era relates to the past as well as the future. The concept of crisis plays an important role in these fantasies, it is key to use it...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 22, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Hansson, K., Brenthel, A. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Imagining the postantibiotic future: the visual culture of a global health threat
This article is concerned with the visual culture of global health data using antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as an example. I explore how public health data and knowledge are repackaged into visualisations and presented in four contemporary genres: the animation, the TED Talk, the documentary and the satire programme. I focus on how different actors describe a world in which there are no or few antibiotics that are effective against bacterial infections. I examine the form, content and style of the visual cultural of AMR, examining how these genres tell a story of impending apocalypse while also trying to advert it. This i...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 22, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Irwin, R. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Wars and sweets: microbes, medicines and other moderns in and beyond the(ir) antibiotic era
Once upon a time, many of us moderns dreamt that our future was bright, squeaky clean, germ-free. Now, we increasingly fear that bacterial resistance movements and hordes of viruses are cancelling our medicated performances, and threatening life as many of us have come to know it. In order for our modern antibiotic theatre of war to go on, we pray for salvation through our intensive surveillance of microbes, crusades for more rational antibiotic wars, increased recruitment of resistance fighters and development of antibiotic armaments through greater investment in our medical-industrial-war complex. But not all of us are i...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 22, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Hutchison, C. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Research forum: imaging a post-antimicrobial future
Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR,1 is a global challenge, with the WHO declaring it one of the ‘top 10 global public health threats facing humanity’. Specifically, the WHO, governments and researchers have highlighted the ‘misuse and overuse of antimicrobials’, and the lack of clean water, sanitation and preventative measures, specifically noting concern over resistant strains of gonorrhoea, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus influenza, HIV, malaria and tuberculosis (WHO 2021). AMR leads to increased morbidity, mortality and costs from infections, not least as a patient may cycle through se...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 22, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Irwin, R., Hansson, K. Tags: Open access, Editor's choice Editorial Source Type: research
The making of a professional digital caregiver: personalisation and friendliness as practices of humanisation
The aim of this paper is to explore how a digital caregiver, developed within a Swedish interdisciplinary research project, is humanised through health-enhancing practices of personalisation and friendliness. The digital caregiver is developed for being used in older patients’ homes to enhance their health. The paper explores how the participants (researchers and user study participants) of the research project navigate through the humanisation of technology in relation to practices of personalisation and friendliness. The participants were involved in a balancing act between making the digital caregiver person-like ...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 22, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Hallqvist, J. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
