Main description:

The extensively updated and revised third edition of the bestselling Social Medicine Reader provides a survey of the challenging issues facing today's health care providers, patients, and caregivers by bringing together moving narratives of illness, commentaries by physicians, debates about complex medical cases, and conceptually and empirically based writings by scholars in medicine, the social sciences, and the humanities.

Volume 1, Ethics and Cultures of Biomedicine, contains essays, case studies, narratives, fiction, and poems that focus on the experiences of illness and of clinician-patient relationships. Among other topics the contributors examine the roles and training of professionals alongside the broader cultures of biomedicine; health care; experiences and decisions regarding death, dying, and struggling to live; and particular manifestations of injustice in the broader health system. The Reader is essential reading for all medical students, physicians, and health care providers.

Contents:

Preface to the Third Edition ix
Introduction 1
Part I. Experiences of Illness and Clinician-Patient Relationships
Silver Water / Amy Bloom 7
"Is She Experiencing any Pain?": Disability and the Physician-Patient Relationship / S. K. Toombs 15
The Cost of Appearances / Arthur Frank 20
The Ship Pounding / Donald Hall 25
God at the Bedside / Jerome Groopman 27
The Use of Force / William Carlos Williams 32
Sunday Dialogue: Conversations between Doctor and Patient / Rebecca Dresser 36
What the Doctor Said / Raymond Carver 42
Part II. Professionalism and the Culture of Medicine
The Learning Curve / Atul Gawande 45
The Perfect Code / Terrence Holt 63
Coeur d'Alene / Richard B. Weinberg 78
The "Worthy" Patient: Rethinking the "Hidden Curriculum" in Medical Education / Robin T. Higashi, Allison Tillack, Michael A. Steinman, C. Bree Johnston, and G. Michael Harper 82
How Doctors Think: Clinical Judgement and the Practice of Medicine / Kathryn Montgomery 95
Healing Skills for Medical Practice / Larry R. Churchill and David Schenck 101
The Hair Stylist, the Corn Merchant, and the Doctor: Ambiguously Altruistic / Lois Shepherd 111
Necessary Accessories / Nusheen Ameenuddin 127
The Critical Vocation of the Essay / Barry F. Saunders 132
The Art of Medicine: Asthma and the Value of Contradictions/ Ian Whitmarsh 140
Script / Mara Buchbinder and Dragana Lassiter 145
Ordinary Medicine: The Power and Confusion of Evidence / Sharon R. Kaufman 149
"Ethics and Clinical Research": The 50th Anniversary of Beecher's Bombshell / David S. Jones, Christine Grady, and Susan E. Lederer 154
Part III. Health Care Ethics and the Clinician's Role
Glossary of Basic Ethical Concepts in Health Care and Research / Nancy M. P. King 167
Ethics in Medicine: An Introduction to Moral Tools and Traditions / Larry R. Churchill, Nancy M. P. King, David Schenck, and Rebecca L. Walker 175
Historical and Contemporary Codes of Ethics: The Hippocratic Oath, the Prayer of Maimonides, the Declaration of Geneva, and the AMA Principles of Medical Ethics 191
Enduring and Emerging Challenges of Informed Consent / Christine Grady 197
Teaching the Tyranny of the Form: Informed Consent in Person and on Paper / Katie Watson 212
A Terrifying Truth / Rebecca Dresser 218
The Lie / Lawrence D. Grouse 222
Discharge Decisions and the Dignity of Risk / Debjani Mukherjee 224
No One Needs to Know / Neil S. Calman 229
Part IV. Death, Dying, and Lives at the Margins
Forty Years of Work on End-of-Life Care: From Patients' Rights to Systemic Reform / Susan M. Wolf, Nancy Berlinger, and Bruce Jennings 239
Try to Remember Some Details / Yehuda Amichai 249
Failing to Thrive? / Kim Sue 251
The Dead Donor Rule and Organ Transplantation / Robert D. Truog and Franklin G. Miller 259
The Darkening Veil of "Do Everything" / Chris Feudtner and Wynne Morrison 263
Death and Dignity: A Case of Individualized Decision Making / Timothy E. Quill 267
Active and Passive Euthanasia / James A. Rachels 273
Clinician-Patient Interactions about Requests for Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Patient and Family View / Anthony L. Back, Helene Starks, Clarissa Hsu, Judith R. Gordon, Ashok Bharucha, and Robert A. Pearlman 280
My Father's Death / Susan M. Wolf 301
Part V. Allocation and Justice
Glossary: Justice and the Allocation of Health Resources / Rebecca L. Walker and Larry R. Churchill 311
Dead Man Walking / Michael Stillman and Monalisa Tailor 316
Full Disclosure: Out-of-Pocket Costs as Side Effects / Peter A. Ubel, Amy P. Abernethy, and S. Yousuf Zafar 320
Seven Sins of Humanitarian Medicine / David R. Welling, James M. Ryan, David G. Burris, and Norman M. Rich 325
Who Should Receive Life Support during a Public Health Emergency? Using Ethical Principles to Improve Allocation Design / Douglas B. White, Mitchell H. Katz, John M. Luce, and Bernard Lo 335
About the Editors 353
Index 355