Language: English

To be a good doctor, study the humanities

The author makes the case for why the study of humanities is necessary for a complete medical education. Humanistic study helps to answer questions that are essential to being a “good” doctor, such as “how best to support a patient who is dying. Do you cry with the patient? Is it acceptable to be detached? Is it OK to resume your life and laugh a few hours later?” Humanistic study also helps physicians appreciate social determinants of health. The article also provides statistics on medical humanities programs, med school acceptance rates for students with humanities background, correlations between humanities background and positive and negative physician attributes, and patterns of residency choices.

The essay could be used as an introductory reading in a medical humanities course.

Think you want to die at home? You might want to think twice about that.

This graphic medicine opinion piece by a professor of medicine and palliative care complicates the belief that a death at home is less expensive or more satisfying than death in a hospital. The author recounts conversations he has had with home caregivers about the burdens of complicated care regimes; the physical, psychological, and economic costs, and the systemic incentives to shift care to home caregivers who may be ill-equipped.

This short piece is useful for discussions about end of life care, both the personal burden for caregivers as well as the systemic and economic incentives. It includes brief quotations from caregivers the author has worked with as well as statistics about end of life care in the US.

Hello, Goodbye

Steve Jobs’ last words were: “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” Oscar Wilde went with: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.” (At least, that’s how the story goes.) But the way most of us part company with language at the end of our lives is more halting and gradual. Even when a dying loved one is unable to speak clearly, other forms of communication often take over: noises, gestures, touch and eye contact. We have stories in this episode from a hospice nurse, from journalists covering mental health and internet culture, and from language writer Michael Erard who is writing a book about last words and their relationship to first words. The author mentioned in the abstract talks about “biological death” vs “social death” and how living people are involved in both. Dying alone seems like the definition of a “bad death,” which led him to write the book about last words – even though they aren’t usually any more profound or meaningful than first words. This is a linguistics-focused podcast so there’s an orientation to language acquisition that will make this useful to a language class – Spanish or English – without being too distracting for a non-language class.

Grand unified theory of female pain

Loosely connected series of observations and thoughts about women and pain, some literary, some from the author’s own experience. One theme is how often womens’ pain is ignored or downplayed as bid for attention.

Wait times: Slipping through the cracks in the emergency room.

A man tells the story of watching his wife suffer agonizing pain for several hours from an ovarian torsion, eventually losing the ovary, and uses that as a starting point to describe how often women’s pain is dismissed by doctors and other caregivers, especially other women.

The story could also prompt discussion of how to account for the health care provider behavior in this story. Do we blame incompetent and insensitive health care providers? What features of their working conditions might produce the behavior this story recounts?

The cookie jar

A rare Stephen King short story that’s both publicly available in a literature magazine and on point for a health narratives course. It has the SK mark of supernatural weirdness/ unexplainability and also nicely profound messages about why human beings turn down unlimited good things – like fresh baked cookies – in favor of something horrible, like war. Mental health struggles become a superpower and there’s symbolism to keep a literature class well engaged for a class period.

The ART of infertility

This is the link to a website for a national arts organization based in Michigan and Wisconsin. The organization curate art exhibits that portray living with infertility, designes curricula and writing worksins, plans outreach events, and advocates for infertility rights. They dsribe their missions as follows: “Through art, we break the silence around reproductive grief and push back against common misconceptions. We invite you to join us in our fight to make infertility visible.”

The site includes galleries of exhibitions, including photos with artist statements and a blog that features personal narratives about the experiences of infertility.

Cigarettes

Juice WRLD (Jarad Higgins) was a rapper who was open about his struggles with addiction, depression and anxiety. He died of a drug overdose in 2019. Many of his music videos can be read as illness narratives. This one has an ultimately upbeat message, as the protagonist goes to AA and gets sober. It begins with a “Text this number for confidential help” message onscreen. This could work in any music/popular media class to talk about health narratives or could be part of an assignment to build a play list around a topic with annotations.

Aftershock

This documentary tells the stories of two Black women who died during or after childbirth, through interviews with their family members. The film examines the higher rates of infant mortality in the US, and especially for Black women, who are 3 to 4 times more likely to die from childbirth-related reasons than White women. The film shows how family members became activists for maternal health care. The award-winning film premiered at Sundance in 2022 and is (at the time of this writing) available on Hulu. It could be used to show how narratives can bring statistics to life, as well as the power of narrative for social change.