Alan Bleakley

"Educating Doctors' Senses Through the Medical Humanities: How Do I Look? uses the medical diagnostic method to identify a chronic symptom in medical culture: the unintentional production of insensibility through compulsory mis-education. This book identifies the symptom and its origins and offers an intervention: deliberate and planned education of sensibility through the introduction of medical humanities to the core undergraduate medicine and surgery curriculum. To change medical culture is an enormous challenge, and this book sets out how to do this by answering the following questions: How has a compulsory mis-education for insensibility developed in medical culture and medical education? How is sensibility capital generated, who 'owns' it, and how is it distributed, mal-distributed and re-distributed? What is the place of resistance (or 'dissensus') in this process? How can the symptom of a 'developed' insensibility be addressed pedagogically through introduction of the medical humanities as core and integrated curriculum provision? How can both the identity constructions of doctors and doctor-patient relationships be tied up with education for sensibility? How can artists work with clinicians, through the medical humanities in medical education, to better educate sensibility? The book will be of interest to all medical educators and clinicians, including those health and social care professionals outside of medicine who work with doctors"--

While medical language is soaked in metaphor, and thinking with metaphor is central to diagnostic work, medicine - that is, medical culture, clinical practice and medical education - outwardly rejects metaphor for objective, literal scientific language. This thought-provoking book argues that this is a misstep, and critically considers what embracing the use of metaphors and similes might mean for shaping medical culture, and especially the doctor-patient relationship. Thinking With Metaphors in Medicine explores: how metaphors inhabit medicine - sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse - and how these metaphors can be revealed, appreciated and understood; how diagnostic work utilizes thinking with metaphors; how patient-doctor communication can be better understood and enhanced as a metaphorical exchange; how the landscape of medicine is historically shaped by leading or didactic metaphors, such as 'the body as machine' and 'medicine as war', which may conflict with other values or perspectives on healthcare, for instance, person-centred, collaborative care. Outlining the kinds of metaphors and resemblances that inhabit medicine and how they shape practices and identities of doctors, colleagues and patients, this book demonstrates how the landscape of medicine may be reshaped through metaphor shift. It is an important work for all those interested in the use of language and rhetoric in medicine, whether hailing from an arts, humanities, social science or healthcare background.

In recent decades medical humanities and medical history have both emerged as rich and varied sub disciplines. This book presents a collection of specially commissioned essays designed to bring together different approaches to these complex fields. Written by a selection of established and emerging scholars in the field, it embraces a breadth and range of methodological approaches to highlight not only developments in established areas of debate, but also to trace fresh areas of investigation, such as graphic medicine, new methodological approaches to the medical humanities, and the value of the humanities in medical education.