Grand Rounds 2:44 Is Up

Submitted by tonyplant on July 25, 2006 - 12:55.

This week's edition of Grand Rounds is hosted and selected by Giskin, AJ and Beth from Medical Humanities. I am fascinated by this insight into the working week and interests of people who make a direct difference to the quality of life of others. Like everything else, good medicine relies on techno-stars but depends upon good communication and co-operation.

All of human life is there, and the narrative is framed around a fabulous selection of gardening images, notes and insights. The explain their metaphors:

So often matters medical are portrayed in the language of war: the fight against disease, the battle against cancer. These are the metaphors that have dominated medical discourse in the mainstream media. Yet, the military metaphor is not inevitable. Health-care professions tend their patients with the devotion and attention that gardeners lavish on their plants, hoping to keep them healthy.

There is a poem about the search for a pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for NF1. There are difficult stories, ranging from the subtle indications that someone is living with spousal abuse to the arrests following controversy about the management of some patients in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

I particularly enjoyed the health warning as to why we should "avoid listening to Prokofiev's "Russia Under the Mongolian Yoke" under any circumstances".

I shall be dipping in and out of this all week. I commend Grand Rounds to you.

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