John Haygarth Summary

Q.37- The men “treating” the protagonist were experimenting on him in order to see the effectiveness of their countless methods of nursing the protagonist back to health, though it had numerous effects on him. For example, he notes his failure to move his body, puzzlement,

The placebo effect has been affecting people for hundreds of years. In the 1940s sugar pills were sold in doctors’ catalogs specifically for the purpose of prescribing them to psychiatric patients. Today, over 60% of doctors admit to prescribing placebos to their patients, although there is an unwritten rule among doctors in the United States that placebos should no longer be given to patients. Some even do it on a regular basis because they believe the effect a fake drug has on the brain is more effective for its price than the real medication or treatment. In the documentary, Placebo: Cracking the Code, viewers see a few different perspective of the placebo effect. They hear from doctors, patients, and researchers to more fully understand the ins and outs of the placebo effect. These different viewpoints serve as an effective way to bring light the producers’ purpose: to show just helpful and sometimes harmful placebo drugs can be.

Atul Gawande in his article “When the Doctor Makes Mistakes” exposes the mystery, uncertainty and fallibility of medicine in true stories that involve real patients. In a society where attorneys protect hospitals and physicians from zealous trials from clients following medical errors, doctors make mistakes is a testimony that Gawande a representative of other doctors speak openly about failures within the medical fields. In this article, Gawande exposes those errors with an intention of showing the entire society and specifically those within the medicine field that when errors are hidden, learning is squelched and those within the system are provided with an opportunity to continue committing the same errors. What you find when you critically analyse Gawande, “When Doctors Make Mistakes essay is how messy and uncertain medicine turns out to be. Throughout the entire article you experience the havoc within the medicine field as the inexperienced doctor misapplies a central line in a patient.

In order to fully understand the situation Miss Evers faced, one would have to take a glimpse into her background. The doctor’s chose her because she was a highly trusted person within the community of patients and maintain strong relationships with their families (Sargent, 2010). She was able to explain to the men what the tests were and convinced them to go through with them. Miss Evers would use simple examples like describing how they

There are challenges that Dr. Correia goes through on occasion. One problem he has is working with the patient’s provider and figuring out what exactly the provider wants him to do. Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what specific tests the provider wants to have Dr. Correia do. Another problem Dr. Correia comes across is when all the tests show nothing wrong so he has to figure out the puzzle of what’s going on with the patient. After figuring out what is wrong with the patient, it also might to difficult to tell the patient if the test results came out bad.

As described by Dr. Atul Gawande in his book Complications, medicine “is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge… fallible individuals” making medicine different from other scientific fields

-With the professionalization of the medical education, nobody is his own doctor anymore. You don’t get medical education by reading medical books on your won

Despite his lack of a medical license or ability to practice medicine, everyone goes to him when they need help. They do not have the luxury of finding a real doctor or going to an actual hospital, so they full-heartedly accept what is available to them without question. Accepting what is available without question is a common theme seen throughout the story.

First, _________________________________. Throughout the entire novel, he recounts a plethora of personal medical experiences derived from his ears surrounded by and immersed in surgery. Furthermore, he clearly lays down his credibility towards the beginning of the novel by stating, “I am a surgical resident, very nearly at the end of my eight years of training in general surgery… At other times I have been a laboratory scientist, a public health researcher, a student of philosophy and ethics, and a health policy adviser in government. I am also a son of two doctors” (Gawande 7). By stating his expansive experiences, people are more adept to agree with his displayed views later in the writing. Medicine is a controversial topic, and introducing these past experiences plays a critical role in

The relationship between a patient and his or her doctor was trustworthy to the point where the patient did not ask their doctor questions. Skloot describes this concept by stating, “There’s no indication that Henrietta questioned him; like most patients in the 1950s, she deferred to anything her doctors said. This was a time when “benevolent deception” was a common practice- doctors often withheld even the most fundamental information from their patients, sometimes not giving them any diagnosis at all” (63). Patients at this time trusted their doctors, and this corresponds to this thought of ‘doctors knowing what’s best and to not question it.’ Skloot was not sure if Henrietta actually questioned her doctor, but she was definitely sure of the concept, ‘benevolent deception,’ being an accepted tradition in the medical field at that time. Another example of deception is, “But Southam wasn’t their doctor, and he wasn’t withholding upsetting health information. The deception was for his benefit- he was withholding information because patients might have refused to participate in his study if they’d known what he was injecting” (130). By not telling patients about injecting them with HeLa cells, Southam was putting them at risk. Despite the fact that they might have declined to cooperate in this study, patients still have the right to know and to be asked for

Pearson fixates her memoir on several different instances of medical mishaps that have happened in her career. For instance, she talks about the tragic death of her patient Mr. Rose. This patient provides Dr. Pearson with a life lesson that it is important to cherish the things you have then the things you wish you had. In this case, Dr. Pearson regrets cherishing the remaining time she had with Mr. Rose before he passes away. Another instance she learns a life lesson would be with her patient Elias, a young boy diagnosed with brain cancer. Even though Elias was slowly dying, his parents continued surgical procedures and heavily depended on the hospital staff to create a miracle. Dr. Pearson knew that Elias would not be able to recover, but she continued to assist through the surgeries as her “hands were tied”. Nevertheless, Dr. Pearson reflects that she could have put down her surgical tools and said no; instead, she participated in the surgeries. Later, Dr. Pearson realizes that her role and her identity as a doctor is to help her patients with their problems and to try to solve them as much as she can in a humane and respectable

The author continues to demonstrate how the placebo effect works by comparing it to the famous biological study by Ivan Pavlov. In Pavlov’s experiment, dogs are conditioned to respond to a specific stimulus and eventually begin to respond to the same stimulus in the same way all the time. Bjerklie explains that, “as far as the placebo effect is concerned, we may as well be those impressionable canines.” What Bjerklie means is that the human mind has the ability to be conditioned to expect certain outcomes. The placebo effect builds on the human minds ability to be conditioned and an individual’s faith in the healthcare providers it choses to visit. Overtime the human mind has come to believe that if given a medication that is suppose to have a positive effect on a specific pathology, it will in fact have an positive effect.

The doctor and his patient portray a troubled encounter that is subject to discussion. This short story reflects real or plausible issues comparable in real life. One example of such an event in Brooklyn when a construction worker filed a lawsuit against a hospital for subjecting him to a rectal exam against his wishes. According to his lawyer, the man begged,”please don’t do that’’ as he was held down, and he punched one of the doctors before being sedated and examined without consent. As a result the man allegedly developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the experience.(Tsai,1) Given to the poor man’s circumstance and how the medical professionals treated him, you can now see how unfit doctors can be to their own patients.

I learned about the placebo effect and how it is often used in studies to better advance medicine and even the power it has on the mind. For example, I was watching a show called “My wife and kids” a few years ago and there was an episode where Junior’s father made him believe that his baby had magical powers, and that somehow holding the baby would make him smart. At the end of the episode his father told him that he had the knowledge all along. I liken Junior’s father to someone who’s performing a study, because at the end they disclose which participants got the real medicine and which got the inactive pill. Prior, to reading this chapter when I thought of Placebos I thought of birth control pills, and how the last week the user is given inactive pills to regulate their period. In that case though it’s not really a placebo effect, its more so a reminder for the user to know when to begin their new pack of

The placebo effect is a widely known phenomenon where patients are given some form of dummy medication in place of actual medication that produces the same effect as the real medication would have. They are intended to help stimulate areas of the brain that may prompt the release of chemicals such as endorphins to aid in relief of the symptom. Tests have shown that forms such as injections psychologically perform better than pills, because of the slight pain that injections bring ( Freeman, Shanna. "How the Placebo Effect Works." HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com, 13 Jan. 2009. Web.). Because of the pain, people tend to believe that the medication would work better. Placebos can be used to treat multiple different diseases, but has been found