The history of Western medicine chronicles a tension between ideologies of patient care—the holistic Hippocratic view and the specialization view, with a depersonalization of the patient that coincides with the rise of pathologic anatomy in the early modern era.
John Meyer joins Ethics Talk to discuss how “human-centered” design can help remove barriers to care and forge solidarity between patients and clinicians, and multidisciplinary artist Eve Payor talks about her projects with the Atlantic Center for the Arts and how soundscape ecology can help us understand effective sound design in health care settings.
The question is whether the medi-spa is a consumer-driven, profit-motivated business that happens to fall under the purview of medical practice or a legitimate and integral part of the health care system? Does it fulfill consumers’ desires or relieve suffering and promote wellness?
Is our generation of physicians somehow “weaker” because we’d rather not spend our entire lives at the office? Physicians who trained and practiced under more grueling conditions wonder how we expect to be competent physicians if we don’t work at it?
Madison L. Esposito and Michelle Kahn-John, PhD, RN
Most clinicians receive little training in integrating Native healing into allopathic practice, which undermines patients’ autonomy and cultural values.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(10):E837-844. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.837.
Bias toward allopathic medicine in the research funding and publication of study results makes it difficult for physicians and others to find accurate data about the efficacy of non-Western, nonallopathic treatments.
Explanation of the Medicare and Medicaid Antikickback statute and Stark Law and their restrictions on physicians' financial interests in ancillary services.
A clinical case shows how medical commercialism poses risks to patients without symptoms who get full body scans. Screening for pre-morbid disease detection is valuable if implemented correctly but calls for physician caution.