The guidelines for patients’ eligibility for bariatric surgery have not changed since 1991, although recent data suggest there may be indications for broadening application of the surgery.
Visual literacy modules can help trainees learn to integrate narrative and visual information in clinical encounters. The medical humanities curriculum at Australia’s Bond University uses art to build students’ diagnostic skills.
AMA J Ethics. 2016; 18(8):843-854. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.8.imhl1-1608.
Nancy Berlinger, PhD and Annalise Berlinger, BSN, RN
Physicians’ reliance on “culture” to explain patients’ noncompliance may serve as code for their discomfort with difference, uncertainty, and distress.
AMA J Ethics. 2017; 19(6):608-616. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.6.msoc1-1706.
Comics allowed me to convey multiple layers of a single experience. With both text and image at my disposal, I could use one to enhance the other or create contradictions and juxtapositions that were jarring or darkly humorous.
The rationale for policy intervention to reduce obesity rates appears compelling. Justification for intervening in the case of children is particularly strong, and precedent suggests that society will more readily accept appropriate restrictions to youth behavior.
Readers, whether critics, the general public, or health care professionals, respond emotionally to physicians who reveal themselves literally and metaphorically in their writing.