The Medical Interview: Mastering Skills for Clinical Practice
Coulehan and Block’s book, The Medical Interview: Mastering Skills for Clinical Practice, is a wonderfully crafted instructional guide on the art and science of how to conduct a medical interview. It is primarily written for medical students who are just beginning their professional interaction with patients. However, it is also designed to serve as a resource for those who are further along in their education. This book is a complete and concise guide to teach the medical student how to perform the most important source of diagnostic information. The authors believe that seventy to eighty percent of all relevant data are derived from the medical interview. The hidden medical curriculum says that real medicine is based solely on objective data (such as numbers, graphs, and images) while subjective information (such as the patient’s story) lacks value because it lacks quantification. In other words, what patients feel, the suffering they experience, and the disability that haunts them are secondary in importance to physiologic quantities that can be directly observed. Thus, most of the clinician’s energy is devoted to tracking down and treating organ-based disease with little energy left over for the personal, social, cultural or spiritual dimensions of illness. The authors are hoping to convince medical professionals of the importance of nonquantifiable material to diagnose and treat a patient.
AIDS: The First 10,000 American Cases
AIDS: The First 10,000 American Cases – Author of the Book, “Walking The Rainbow: An Arc to Triumph by Richard René Silvin – By the summer of 1981, an unnamed phenomenon was being widely discussed in medical circles. Three here-to-fore rare illnesses: a pneumonia (Pneumocystis Carinii), a cancer (Kaposi’s Sarcoma) and a fungus (Candida) were atypically being observed in increasing numbers in large American metropolitan centers. A Center for Disease Control (CDC) task force created a new term grouping them as “Opportunistic Infections” meaning conditions that would not normally appear in healthy individuals and which, therefore, needed some “opportunity” to manifest themselves. Sadly, since the problem was so largely based in the homosexual community, it did not ignite concern in government or even among the general public. A conservative wave had come to power in Washington, DC, and it was clear that as long as “normal Americans” were not at risk, there was no reason to prioritize research programs or even education.
The Healing Touch
Authors of the book, The Body Has A Mind of Its Own, Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee as you to imagine lying on a therapy table as a healer places her hand under the back of your neck. Her touch is gentle, calm, tranquil. She places her other hand lightly onto your left shoulder, then onto your right shoulder. A sensation of tingling warmth ripples through your body. A nagging pain in your lower back begins to drain away. It’s not vanquished, but it fades drastically. You relax under the spell of the healer’s hands.
