This third volume in the Companion to Medical Humanities series considers the concept of treatment as an active process which produces an outcome, be it effective, inappropriate or inadequate. It invites the reader to examine the relevance of the patients' belief in any given treatment and their confidence in the practitioner. Against a person-cent
In this landmark Companion, expert contributors from around the world map out the field of the critical medical humanities. This is the first volume to introduce comprehensively the ways in which interdisciplinary thinking across the humanities and social sciences might contribute to, critique and develop medical understanding of the human individually and collectively. The thirty-six newly commissioned chapters range widely within and across disciplinary fields, always alert to the intersections between medicine, as broadly defined, and critical thinking. Each chapter offers suggestions for further reading on the issues raised, and each section concludes with an Afterword, written by a leading critic, outlining future possibilities for cutting-edge work in this area. Topics covered in this volume include: the affective body, biomedicine, blindness, breath, disability, early modern medical practice, fatness, the genome, language, madness, narrative, race, systems biology, performance, the postcolonial, public health, touch, twins, voice and wonder. Together the chapters generate a body of new knowledge and make a decisive intervention into how health, medicine and clinical care might address questions of individual, subjective and embodied experience.
This fourth volume in the Companion to Medical Humanities series contemplates the challenge of the prognosis, of looking ahead, wondering what will happen, and attempting to make sense of life and death.
Divided into two main sections, the Companion looks at "Reflections" - offers current thinking and definitions within health humanities, and "Applications" comprises a wide selection of a range of arts and humanities modalities from comedy and writing to dancing, yoga and horticulture.
When a person falls ill, their experience changes - sometimes in a very minor and transient way, sometimes in a decisive and lasting one. 'Diagnosis' is often seen as the process of scientifically and objectively identifying the causes of this subjective experience, but is the process and meaning of 'diagnosis' really as simple as this implies? As this volume of The Medical Humanities Companion argues, diagnoses are an answer to complex human needs that spring from being ill, and are in turn a complex, culturally mediated interaction between individuals, scientific discoveries, social negotiation and historical change. This volume makes visible the complexities and ambiguities involved in giving and receiving diagnoses, and how they shape and are shaped by views on what is real and acceptable, and how people relate to the phenomena of illness.
This third volume in the Companion to Medical Humanities series considers the concept of treatment as an active process which produces an outcome, be it effective, inappropriate or inadequate. It invites the reader to examine the relevance of the patients' belief in any given treatment and their confidence in the practitioner. Against a person-centred backdrop, it investigates boundaries, and reflects on the practical demands on a health care system limited in its resources, where the price of choice for one may be the restriction of service for the other. It also questions the supposed contrasts between treatment and cure, redefining the meaning of care in daily practice. It offers inspirational reading for all academics and professionals with an interest in the medical humanities, as well as researchers in philosophy of medicine and medical ethics. CPD with Radcliffe. This book can be used to achieve CPD (Continuing Professional Development) points through directed reading. We provide a free online form, and downloadable certificate for your appraisal portfolio. For more information and to claim CPD points on this book, visit www.radcliffehealth.com/cpd.
When a person falls ill, their experience changes - sometimes in a very minor and transient way, sometimes in a decisive and lasting one. 'Diagnosis' is often seen as the process of scientifically and objectively identifying the causes of this subjective experience, but is the process and meaning of 'diagnosis' really as simple as this implies? As this volume of The Medical Humanities Companion argues, diagnoses are an answer to complex human needs that spring from being ill, and are in turn a complex, culturally mediated interaction between individuals, scientific discoveries, social negotiation and historical change. This volume makes visible the complexities and ambiguities involved in giving and receiving diagnoses, and how they shape and are shaped by views on what is real and acceptable, and how people relate to the phenomena of illness.
Using fictionalized case studies this series follows four patients through the medical process, from onset (Symptom) through Diagnosis, Treatment and Prognosis
This authoritative new handbook offers a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the state of the medical humanities globally, showing how clinically oriented medical humanities, the critical study of medicine as a global historical and cultural phenomenon, and medicine as a force for cultural change can inform each other. Composed of eight parts, the Routledge Handbook of the Medical Humanities looks at the medical humanities as: a network and system therapeutic provocation forms of resistance a way of reconceptualising the medical curriculum concerned with performance and narrative mediated by artists as diagnosticians of culture through public engagement. This book describes how the medical humanities can be used in and out of clinical settings, acting as a point of resistance, redistributing medicine’s capital amongst its stakeholders, embracing the complexity of medical instances, shaping medical education, promoting interdisciplinary understandings and recognising an identity for the medical humanities as a network effect. This book is an essential read for all students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in the medical humanities.
