The Gross Clinic Summary

Gawande builds a connection with his audience through credibility. The reader is able to have a better understanding of his work from his experience in the medical field. Gawande accomplishes this by breaking down the process during a medical procedure, "The first step in caring for a trauma patient is always the same…The first thing you do is make sure that the patient can breathe without difficulty" (3). This explanation allows the reader to realize the importance of specific

In the next stanza, the poet describes “A figure walking towards cloaked in blue/ Beeping/ Tubes/ Needles.” The poem addresses the routinely and monotonous aspect of being in the hospital for long periods of time. It is a critique of the biomedical model and how the hospital system is created where patients are tended to by multiple doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals. The patients and healthcare professionals are unable to form a relationship that consists of what Kleinman describes as “empathetic witnessing” (Kleinman). Therefore, detachment between patient and health workers is developed and established, to which the patient cannot recognize or know the people assisting them. In addition, Grealy discusses this in her earliest accounts and appointments with doctors. She states that there is a layer of “condescension” and is an “endemic in the medical

Born in 1912, Chien-Shiung Wu was an overlooked physician who broke a law of physics when contributing to the Manhattan Project in the 40’s! She helped in developing the atom bomb at Columbia University, and ”became known as one of the best experimental physicists of her time”-According to Nina Byers, a retired Physics professor who taught at University of California in Los Angeles.

The similarities, and differences, between Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s Anatomy of Dr. Tulp (1632) and Thomas Eakins’ The Agnew Clinic (1889) are both uncanny and unprecedented. Painted in 1630’s Amsterdam during the Dutch Baroque period, Rembrandt sought to preserve the rare occasion in which a real human body was used as an academic tool in order to prove anatomy theories. On the contrary, Eakins piece was painted in 19th century America during the realist movement to memorialize a retiring professor. However, it is their similarities that make them comparable; they were both commissioned by academic institutions, they both depict a surgery in progress, they both celebrate the careers of notable

Accompanying illness is the loss of control over one’s life and the development of vulnerability and doubt in the future (Hansen et al., 2012). By experiencing these emotions, individuals often go through the psychological state of uncertainty. While the feeling is subjective to each individual, uncertainty can be characterized as a process that has the ability to change over time with the influence of support from external resources. The initial stages of illness (diagnosis and coping) is equivalent to the girl sinking into the ocean perspective of the image (see Appendix B). In this cropped version of the image, the sky is a nostalgic, orange colour which represents one's personal comfort and equilibrium. The girl is reaching towards the sky as she falls deeper into the ocean because she longs to be placed back in a place of comfort as her new oceanic surroundings are strange and her future is uncertain. However, in another perspective of the same image (see Appendix C), the girl is now soaring towards the city down below - her body language indicates that she is comfortable and living in the moment, seemingly enjoying her time in the contextual sky that used to be an ocean. The city below represents reality and society. Although not represented in the art piece, the healthcare environment - particularly nurses - possess a

“I had a good idea of what was going on,” he said in relation to the Manhattan Project. The idea of the convoy sent to the Trinity Test in Alamogordo in July 1945. During this time, Roger would meet his, future wife, Jane who worked with the Women’s Army Corp (WAC). Jane had been assigned to Los Alamos to work with telephone communications. “I was 24, a buddy of mine told her that I was married, I had to really work hard after that to get her attention, but I met Jane out in the street, that’s where we courted as well, there was no other place to go.” In 1945, Roger and Jane married and went to work on creating a family together. After the conclusion of the Manhattan Project, how to handle the laboratory’s future became an important question. “That’s when Bradbury went into high gear,” Roger stated, which he followed by

When watching the characters prance across the screen, one of the first things that strikes the viewer is how childlike the patients are. Their squabbles, presided over and regulated by the mother-like figure of Nurse Ratched, are quite similar to those that occur between siblings everyday. Their fixation on trivial occurrences and objects betray an infatuation with discovery concerning their environment. In this film universe, each patient is represented the same way, a far cry from their portrayal as slightly strange individuals whose conditions render them unique as seen in the

The only reason many of the scientists kept working for the project was because they saw it as a necessary evil and a weapon that could stop the war, stop the bloodshed. Joseph Rotbalt a Polish physicist, and one of the many scientists brought to Los Alamos to work on the two atomic weapons found himself in a great moral dilemma. He was against the bombs but saw the Nazis as a great danger to the world that needed to be destroyed, an idea held by many of the scientists inside the Manhattan Project. But once it was discovered by Rotblat that US did not intend to use the weapon on the now ailing Nazi empire, but as a deterrent for the Soviets, he was appalled. ‘‘Until then I thought our work was to prevent a Nazi victory, and now I was told that the weapon we were preparing was intended for use against the people who were making extreme sacrifices for that very aim,’’ Rotblat would later comment. He was the only scientist to leave Los Alamos after it was transpired that the weapons would be used on enemies other than the Nazis. 5 Concerned by what he had learned in the Manhattan Project, Rotblat took up the helm in the disarmament community. He collected signatures from well-known scientists including the renowned Albert Einstein, denouncing the use of nuclear and atomic weaponry. He was the warrior fighting nuclear weaponry at the time and after the testing of a hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, Rotblat investigated and discovered that the bomb had released radioactivity far greater than the US scientists working on the bomb had revealed. He also cofounded the Pugwash organization that is committed to nuclear disarmament. 6 In 1995 Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference of 1957 were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in nuclear disarmament. Rotblat had this to say after he was awarded the

Inez Robb, an impressive woman herself, wrote an article entitled, “Youthful Physicist Wins ‘Woman of The Year’ Award”, published in the Washington Post on December 30, 1945. Less than a year after the end of World War II, women were feeling pressure to return to their positions back in the home, to go back to being the feminine ideal.

Thomas Eakins, an American painter, is recognized for his anatomical depictions of men and women in his paintings. In the Romantic era, it was known for artists to illustrate scenes which evoke emotions; however, Eakins’ The Gross Clinic (1875) bluntly portrayed a bloody surgery, which was not received well, due to the fact that few other painting depicted such a vulgar and graphic scene. In the nineteenth century, men were viewed as the rational, reasonable and intellectual beings, superior over the passive and submissive qualities of women. In that time period, man was considered woman’s superior over God’s appointment. Eakins portrayal of men and women reflect the characters of both sexes present in his society.

ADHD, defiance disorder, pregnancy, these are just few of the things medicalized in the West (Davies 1995). With the rising prestige of Doctors in the 19th century, came a widening of the gap of knowledge between Doctors and the general population (Davies 1995). Doctors have kept a sort of lock on medical knowledge, enabling them to medicalize all sorts of “issues” aided by the idea of the medical mystique. But with the emergence of medicalization and cures that are being searched for by Doctors, a new problem has arisen. This fixation on curing illnesses has led to Doctors viewing patients as experiments and not as human beings, this is seen especially in technologically advanced societies as exemplified in the movie Wit. In addition to this new problem, there are clear establishments of hierarchy between medical professionals such as Doctors and nurses as well as the emotional detachments with the patients which can lead to patients feeling left out and alone.

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David 's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Not worried about being safe and taking the pre-cautions, he plunged into a new project: building a nuclear breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed. In the Radioactive Boy Scout, veteran journalist Ken Silverstein recreates- in brilliant detail-the months of David 's improbable nuclear quest. Acting as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the United States government and from industry experts. Shopping antiques stores and looking through junkyards for old-fashioned smoke

Otto Hahn was a renowned German radiochemist who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of nuclear fission after a lifetime of working with radioactive isotopes. Nuclear fission is widely regarded as the number one key invention that activated the atomic bomb. Hahn is considered to be one of the most famous chemists of all time and the "father of nuclear chemistry." He also was admired by many modern scientist with many achievements, working methods and his integrity in chemistry and physics. During Hahn’s lifetime he was recognized by many scientists as one of the primary discoverers in chemistry and physics.

The research topic that I am interested in for this paper is bedside manner. I am interested in exploring its definition, as well as doctor’s role in it. I am also interested in exploring its effectiveness that brings not only healing to the patient, but also make a stronger relationship between doctor and patient. This is related to one of the inquiry above in a way that it directly explore the traditional model of bedside manner and its impact on patient wellness. Additionally, I would like to explore certain illnesses or diseases that can be cured through this kind of diagnosis instead of the use of technology, which is also exploring not only the traditional, but non-traditional model of bedside manner as well, one of the inquiry above.

Karen Silkwood, for which the film is named, was a chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plutonium fuels production plant in Crescent, Oklahoma, and one of the first female members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers’ Union to hold a position, (PBS, 1995). Karen typically worked in a metallography laboratory grinding and polishing plutonium pellets that were eventually used for fuel rods and was considered to be an activist who was critical of plant safety. Karen Silkwood did not fit the standard mold of a woman during the 1970’s and is considered to be one of the major nuclear whistleblowers of all time.