Assignment 2
The Culture of Medicine and the Physician-Patient Relationship

Rhetorical goal:
In this unit, you will be practicing skills that are essential to both professional and academic writing: analyzing texts, selecting key elements of those texts to focus on, and making an argument about why those elements are important.

Readings:
From The Social Medicine Reader, Vol I: Patients, Doctors and Illness, ed. Nancy M.P. King et al. Second Edition. Duke University Press, 2005.?????

From Part I, “The Experience of Illness”:
(1) Arthur Frank: “The Cost of Appearances”

From Part II, “The Culture of Medicine and the Physician-Patient Relationship”:
(entire section)
(1) Basic Clinical Skills: The First Encounters / Melvin Konner 89
(2) The Learning Curve / AtulGawande 102
(3) Case Study: The Student Doctor and a Wary Patient / Marc D. Basson, Gerald Dworkin, and Eric J. Cassell 121
(4) A Students View of a Medical Teaching Exercise / AbenaaBrewster 127
(5) Primum non tacere: An Ethics of Speaking Up / James Dwyer 130
(6) Perspective Shift / Daniel Shapiro 143
(7) Facing Our Mistakes / David Hilfiker 145
(8) God at the Bedside / Jerome Groopman 154
From Part III, “Health Care Ethics and the Clinician’s Role”:
(1) Churchill, King, and Schenck: “Ethics in Medicine: An Introduction to Moral Tools and Traditions”
(2) George Annas: “Informed Consent, Cancer, and Truth in Prognosis”
(3) Benjamin Freedman: “Offering Truth: One Ethical Approach to the Uninformed Cancer Patient”

From Part IV, “The End of Life”:
(1) Steven Miles: “Informed Demand for ‘Non-Beneficial’ Medical Treatment
(2) Timothy Quill: “Death and Dignity: A Case of Individualized Decision Making”
Schedule for A2 cycle:
FEB
Wk 4 1
A1 Due *Begin A2*
2
3
No class
(extra time for you to do your readings) 4 5
Class
6 7
FEB
Wk 5 8
A2 prewriting sheet due 9
10
Quiz on readings
Continue work on A2 prewriting sheet 11
12
Conferences for A2.
3 page draft due. 13
14

FEB
Wk 6 15
Presidents’ Day Holiday 16
17
Conferences for A2.
3 page draft due. 18
19
Conferences for A2.
3 page draft due. 20
21
FEB
Wk 7 22
4 page draft due for workshop 23
24
A2 due *Begin A3*
25
26
Begin discussion of A3 topics 27
28
Name:
Prewriting Sheet for A2

Step 1
Make a list of at least five topics, issues, or questions that you find interesting and/or important for health professionals to think about:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.
Step 2
Now – keeping the prompt below in mind – choose any one reading and fill in the following:

1. Author:

2. Title:

3. Describe a significant issue raised by this piece of writing in one sentence.

Issue (one only):

4. Keeping the issue above in mind, write a thesis sentence for Assignment 1 answering the following prompt:

Is the writer successful in conveying the significance and complexity of this issue?

Your initial thesis:
Note:
(a) Your thesis should consider the extent to which the writer is successful, and why (and/or why not).
(b) A1 will be a 5-6 page thesis-driven essay.
(c) The thesis sentence should be no more than 1-2 sentences long.