The clinician/healer must both address the disease and seek to know how the medical condition is being experienced by the patient—what impact it has on his or her life and spirit.
Consideration of what constitutes sufficient information about how donation protocols can interfere with a patient’s dying process is a key feature of consent processes.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E708-716. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.708.
The authors address the medical ethics question of whether autopsy is necessary from Cartesian and sociocultural perspectives and how to obtain consent.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(8):771-778. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.8.ecas2-1608.
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.
Physicians need to carefully explain the difficult medical realities of carrying a fetus with severe congenital abnormalities to term but then follow the wishes of a religious family who ask for reasonable medical care.