The Culture, Narrative, and Medicine course at Loyola University of Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine teaches cultural humility through literature and students' reflective writing.
A philosophical analysis of how physician actions and treatment goals are defined and interpreted and how understanding this process can affect the success of the clinical encounter.
Demographic information about a specific subset of patients can help physicians recognize conditions they do not expect to find in the larger population.
The current Medicare operation—reimbursing medical goods and services to a growing number of people without basing the reimbursement benefit on the actual cost of the services—is unsustainable, but there are some possible remedies.
Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.
Parents’ right to choose the culture of their children and a child’s right to an open future outweigh the right of the Deaf to perpetuate their culture by disallowing government funding of cochlear implant research to restore hearing.
Physicians should recognize that patients’ beliefs may cause them to have non-medical explanations for their illnesses and that shared explanations should be negotiated if treatment plans are to be successful.
The ongoing anthrax vaccination case, Doe v Rumsfeld, tests whether the military can require participation in and punish refusal of a vaccination program while waiving informed consent.