Course Description:
In this class we will examine the need for change in modern medicine to tackle current demands from contemporary society. These will include looking at current controversies that have required new demands from doctors and even attempts at reform to address them.
Week 1: Introduction: Changes in Healthcare: Comparing Past to Present
This article discusses reforms to the healthcare industry that have allowed it become what it is today. More specifically, the article looks at how discrimination against patients, the length of stays at hospitals, and the sole dependency on doctors have been changed to implement a more patient empowered healthcare system.
Week 2: Controversial Topics Doctors Must Address in Today’s Society
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/can-we-talk-about-your-weight/
Lerner’s article discusses the tip toeing that physicians must do to comply with their patients in order to address completely justified matters such as weight. One must ask for permission before bringing up an issue of weight, however Lerner argues that where is the proof that a strategy like asking for permission improves health? The article goes on to discuss many other current topics such as smoking, binge drinking and unprotected sex, and that doctor’s should have the ability to not only discuss such topics but also suggest that they might need fixing.
Week 3: Gender and Politics: Obamacare comes under fire
This article discusses how the state of Texas, and many religious organizations filed a lawsuit against Obamacare’s implied change to the definition of gender. For example, transgender people have changed the way gender is defined to becoming an internal feeling, rather than a natural state determined at birth. The lawsuit claims that doctors will be forced to “perform controversial and sometimes harmful medical procedures ostensibly designed to permanently change an individual’s sex — including the sex of children.” This continues our discussion of the current demands that doctors must face in lieu of controversy.
Week 4: Politics: Healthcare Reform and its Effect on Physicians
“Making sure more Americans have health insurance can only be a major victory, right? Too bad the medical establishment is not celebrating.” This article discusses the drawback that physicians face due to the increasing power of government in healthcare reform. In order to provide healthcare for all, the government is turning to a cost efficient solution of reducing physician reimbursement, which certainly poses a problem since the supply of patients are only increasing. This introduces a new topic all together, for it would really require physicians to pursue their jobs for the genuine interest of helping patients, rather than a promising salary.
Week 5: Technology:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/11/chinese-baidu-unveils-ai-health-chatbot-for-patients-and-doctors.html
This first article discusses the new chatbot doctor app invented by the Chinese to help connect with patients and suggest diagnoses to doctors. The bot is designed to be the first step that a patient can reach out to when feeling sick. The patient can pose a question to it, and will receive an answer from a database of medical information. The main proponent of this stem is that it will only get better with time, since the more patients are answered and treated, the larger the database will grow in information and accuracy.
This article talks about how an actual robot has been implemented into primary care, serving the role of virtual personal health assistants (VPHAs). These humanoid machines have proved to be more responsive and accurate than their human counterparts. The benefits of resorting to artificial intelligence include: reducing the chance of medical errors once human judgment is taken out of the equation, the patient would have an unprecedented access to medical information, which was once limited in a traditional patient-doctor relationship, and the cost of healthcare could significantly decrease since people could be easily replaced by robots.
Week 6: The Internet: A New Source Patients are Turning To
http://www.imop.gr/sites/default/files/frontistirio_1_mitropoulos.pdf
One of the most important roles of a doctor is to establish a relationship with their patient so that they can effectively learn about their problems and treat them accordingly. However, as the article discusses, many patients resort to the Internet when dissatisfied from a consultation, or even to search for a community with a similar problem in the form of online forums or blogs. This study also discusses how patients often find comfort in online communities when searching for more information about their ailments, which can help alleviate feelings of loneliness or depression since these interactions are not bound by geographic or time constraints.
Week 7: The Change in the MCAT, Is it enough?
This first article starts our discussion by refuting the new changes in the MCAT and stating that it simply isn’t enough. Americans want a lot from doctors, and patients today want to be wholly treated, not just their illness. The author explains that although medical knowledge is important, it is merely a fraction of requirements that must be met by a well-rounded doctor in order to handle the demands of the job. More specifically, the criticism here is in regards to the attitude behind success of a doctor- mastery of hard sciences is relevant, but doctors require a mastery of critical thinking.
Week 8: Why Modern Medicine Needs to Change:
This article discusses the many problems that plague modern medicine which include: patients feeling like their treatments are timed, unsatisfactory short consultations lack of medical education, and the “era of the generalist.” This theme is quite powerful, because misdiagnosis and subsequent failure to prescribe proper medication has become the root for many cases in which the damage is irreversible. “I believe it is time for modern medicine to acknowledge that we have lost our way somewhere – over-diagnosis, over-investigation, over-medicalisation and over-treatment.”
