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Perspectives, Practices and Patients (Core 1)

Overview

  • Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
  • Tutors: Professor Jo Winning (Birkbeck), Professor Zoe Playdon (KSS Deanery), Pam Shaw (KSS Deanery)
  • Assessment: a 2000-word reflective learning log and a 5000-word critical essay

Module description

The main aim of this module is to introduce you to the key questions which inform the whole of the Master’s programme: what is the art of medicine as it takes place in the everyday, lived experience of doctors and patients, that is, what does it mean to be a patient, what does it mean to be a doctor, and what is the nature of the space created between them in their interactions? This module initiates those inquiries by providing a broad introduction to ways of thinking, talking and writing about the languages, cultures and ideologies that provide the humanistic tradition in the practice of medicine. It will begin by tracing the confused and confusing, yet assertively and repeatedly used iconography of Western biomedicine - the staff of Asklepios and the caduceus of Hermes - as a series of associative images, relating them to art, architecture, poetics and narrative forms. This will provide a broad basis for focused inquiry into the creation of a ‘third space’ between the doctor and the patient, to which each brings their distinctive contribution. Cultural perspectives on the interactions that construct the relationship between doctor and patient will focus on language, positioning and identity, grounding these in the participants’ own professional and personal experience.

You will be supported in the acquisition of critical reading and writing skills through the use of formative assessment and through sessions constituted of structured workshops, discussions and lectures. In addition, space will be given for you to reflect upon the theoretical material you encounter on the course in specific relation to your own practice as a doctor.

Indicative module syllabus

  • The figure of the doctor: symbols of medicine; lineages of medicine
  • The body in culture
  • The sexed body and its genders
  • Spaces and discourses
  • Language, space and narratives
  • The affective third space: encounters between doctors and patients 
  • Interpreting the physical third space: landscapes and architectures of medicine

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • understand the ways in which key concepts such as doctor, patient, disease, symptom, health and the clinic are discursively constructed in different historical periods and cultural environments
  • understand and value the diversity of different medical practices within particular communities
  • understand how the ‘third space’ between doctor and patient is formed in contemporary medical practices
  • form and sustain critically rigorous arguments
  • undertake critical reading of both primary and secondary theoretical texts
  • write in both critical and more exploratory or experiential ways about the nature of your own clinical practice
  • reflect critically on your own clinical practice both individually and in a group setting
  • discuss and interrogate with peers the development and transfer of best practice in a clinical setting.