The Clinic & The Person
The Clinic and The Person is a podcast developed to summon or quicken the attention of health care professionals, their educators, researchers and others to the interests and plights of people with specific health problems aided through knowledge and perspectives the humanities provide. We are guided by how physician-writer Iona Heath sees the arts adding a view to biomedicine “that falls from a slightly different direction revealing subtly different detail” and how that view applies to particular health care situations. Our aim is to surface these views, and our desire is to present them in ways that encourage and enable health care professionals to fully engage, to consider all sources, not just biomedical, in their roles helping people with their particular health problems.
“The Clinic” represents all that Biomedicine brings to bear on disease processes and treatment protocols, and “The Person,” represents all that people experience from health problems. Our episodes draw from works in the humanities—any genre—that relate directly to how people are affected by specific clinical events such as migraine headaches, epileptic seizures, and dementia, and by specific health care situations such as restricted access to care and gut-wrenching, life and death choices. We analyze and interpret featured works and provide thoughts on how they apply in patient care and support; health professions education; clinical and population research; health care policy; and social and cultural influences and reactions.
The Clinic & The Person
Sweet Sand of Time: James Dickey’s poem Diabetes with Guest Dr. Jack Coulehan
We feature James Dickey’s poem, Diabetes, with our guest, the renowned physician-poet Dr. Jack Coulehan. We discuss insights the poem offers about the trajectory of type 2 diabetes from the time of symptom onset until the time a balance is achieved between maximum compliance with disease management requirements and the compromises an acceptable lifestyle can necessitate for many individuals. In addition to providing his perspectives on how the poem expands on the biomedical components of diabetes in recognizing effects such as fear, anxiety, frustration, and oppression, Dr. Coulehan recounts how he has used this poem and others in teaching medical students and residents. He also tells stories of particular instances in which he used poetry as part of the care he provided certain patients, and as a way to connect with them.
Links:
Dr. Jack Coulehan’s bio at Stonybrook University is here.
The poem, Diabetes, and the comparative biomedical text discussed can be seen here in Russell Teagarden’s blog, According to the Arts.
Dr. Coulehan’s poem, I’m Gonna Slap Those Doctors, which was central to one of the stories he told, can be accessed here. And, his poem, The Man with Stars Inside Him, which was central to another story he told, can be accessed here.
In this episode, we make a distinction between illness as the subjective perceptions of a health problem and disease as the pathological basis of a health problem. This distinction is explained in much greater depth here in According to the Arts.
The Literature, Arts and Medicine Database at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, a great source for Humanities works related to disease, illness, and health care, is found here.
Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.
Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit us at our website.
Executive producer: Anne Bentley
