A more nuanced translation of Hippocrates’ original Greek text might read: Life is too short; the task is huge; the right time is like a razor blade; the road to experience is fraught with hazards; to continuously accept reality and critical thought over hope and prejudice is taxing.
Tag Archive: medical profession
The art and science of medicine
Physician as lone practitioner
Bureaucratized shift-work is not good for doctors and it’s not good for patients. I don’t know what the solution will be. Primary care doctors are asking to be paid by the hour, not for piece work. That might help. The wealthy can afford concierge doctors. Maybe something will come out of the medical home concept. If doctors and patients get unhappy enough, perhaps a creative solution will evolve.
The tyranny of health
A recent commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association asks: If individuals don’t use preventive services, “what kind of penalty … would be ethically and morally acceptable?” The question wasn’t “How do we account for unhealthy behavior,” but what punishment would be sufficient either to change that behavior or at least to save money by denying these people health care.
The physician as humanist
In 1980 the historian G.S. Rousseau expressed concern that modern physicians no longer embodied the humanist tradition of their predecessors. Now that medicine had become overwhelmingly a science rather than an art, he claimed, the interests and accomplishments of physicians had narrowed.
It was not uncommon, for Victorian and Edwardian doctors … to write prolifically throughout their careers. … In twentieth-century America … only the most imaginative physicians can hope for this artistic lifestyle as a consequence of the economic constraints and housekeeping demands placed upon the doctor.
The physician as reader of poetry
Why My Wife Should Let Me Have a Dog
If I had a dog his soft fur would not foliate
the sofa or trigger asthma attacks
in my dear wife, ending with a hospital trip,
an adrenaline shot and those inhaler tubes
littering the house.
The physician as poet
There is harm
because there is this innocent animal,
the body;
because a baby’s unguarded gaze,
and the open regard
of animals both hold patience
with the world,
with mineral fact. Impenetrable
consciousness
arising from, locked into flesh.
Are some diseases more prestigious than others?
Among medical specialties, some are more prestigious than others. You can generally tell which ones are more prestigious by how well they pay. Surgery and cardiology, for example, rank at the top of the prestige scale. Psychiatry and dermatology are near the bottom. One ...
The esteem of the medical profession: Then and now
Each issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association includes an excerpt from an issue of exactly 100 years ago. (JAMA has been published continuously since 1883.) The May 7, 1910 issue of JAMA included remarks on how much ...
Justice triumphs for whistle-blowing Texas nurse
The wheels of justice may turn slowly, but for Anne Mitchell, the Texas nurse who was prosecuted for complaining about the unethical conduct of a doctor, justice is proceeding. The doctor in question, Rolando Arafiles, is about to be formally disciplined. (For background on this story, see Whistle blowing: Nurse Anne Mitchell vs. ...
A raffle for free (human) eggs
Source: Babble At a London seminar promoting American donor eggs for infertile British women, a Virginia infertility clinic offered attendees the chance to win an American woman's eggs. Also included was a free in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle (a $23,000 value). The reaction, on ...
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