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Health Care Provisos
I think one’s occupation tends to encourage a tightly focussed view of only one lane on the road, and a trust that it and it alone will lead to the intended destination. In my hitherto tunnelled vision, it had always been the Medical Model that dominated -to the exclusion of any rival Magisterium. But as time matures, I have…
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The Medical Illustrator
I am an illustrator, a drawer of pictures, if not by aptitude, then by necessity. Many of the concepts I am required to explain beg for diagrams, for pictures, for some sort of visual representation. It is amazing, for example, how many people do not know what a uterus looks like, what’s attached to it,…
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Mother-Baby Units in Prisons
Mothers keeping their babies while in prison -a great idea? I have to admit that I hadn’t thought much about it until the Media publicized a case being considered by the British Columbia Supreme Court. A mother-baby program was cancelled at a regional institute in 2008 and the contention is that this not only violated an…
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Patient Ethics.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about ethics; I’m not sure why, although I suppose it’s a common attribute of age: a way, perhaps, of appraising one’s own affect on the world. I’ve written before about the usual constituents of an ethical assessment: Respect of Autonomy -respect, in other words, for a different opinion; Justice -or…
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Sex Selection… or Any Selection
Another day, another march. This time it was the March for Life in Ottawa where the usual Pro-Life rhetoric was rebranded as being against sex-selection abortions. A worthy cause, for sure, and probably more universally palatable than condemning all abortions -whether done for medical, genetic, or even social reasons- as they have in the past. And by aligning themselves with the…
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The Objective Doctor
Is there objectivity in Medicine? Is it even possible? Can there ever be a decision or an opinion that is not contingent and shaped by something not currently obvious? If we engage with someone, are we not also conversing with their past? And are they not interacting with our own shadows? I ask this because I have always wondered…
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Intimations of Mortality
It’s never easy to be a doctor -especially an obstetrician. Accouchement is just too unpredictable; babies are just too vulnerable, too fragile. Too many things can go wrong. Quickly. Unexpectedly. Too many people are affected -the doctor included. Most of us travel through our days in the naïve hope that we will somehow escape unscathed; that bad things…
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Memories
She looked familiar; you have to give me that. And my receptionist nodded and smiled as I picked up the chart from the rack by the waiting room; I knew that nod -obviously I’d seen her before. I’ve seen so many patients over the years, and I don’t remember them all, so I appreciate these little cues from…
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The Great Divide
Is there a Great Divide? Strange, perhaps, that the question has continued to haunt me all these years; but you see, if there is, it matters. As I’ve written about before, we each see the world through our own eyes and bring to that perception our own acculturated expectations, our own history, and yes, our own prejudices.…
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