Quotes and references acquired or produced through my academic studies.
Healthcare – especially public healthcare – is optimized for risk management. This will always be true despite talk of ‘personalized medicine’. It perpetuates its own truths and pre-approves acceptable choices for patients. Our experts and clinicians are trained to operate the system as it is, not to construct it on the fly according to each patient’s needs. Continue Reading
“It surprises me deeply that there is no oversight governing the involvement of patients and families in advisory roles in research, when the protection afforded them as research subjects is paramount.” Continue Reading
If healthcare really cared, we would be much further along by now. Why are we still talking about what ‘meaningful’ looks like? Why are patient experts still not paid for their expertise? Why have we not developed a body of research to quantify the value of patient engagement? Continue Reading
What is clinical bioethics? In my graduate bioethics program, we considered a range of healthcare topics in the context of our society’s ever-evolving moral and technological landscape – topics such as autonomy and consent, justice, equity, the allocation of resources, pandemics,… Continue Reading
A patient’s reporting of symptoms or telling of their story to a physician, however compassionate that physician may be, is not the same thing as the patient’s full and valued participation in not only identifying and framing their own health issues, but also problem-solving and goal-setting. Continue Reading
My thesis is done! I’m not going to post it anywhere until I’ve graduated in a few weeks, but in the meantime, here is a summary (which I adapted from the abstract). Physician-Assisted Suicide: Slippery Slopes and Safeguards Although physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is legal… Continue Reading
Discussion of advance directives has popped up on my radar a lot lately. Could be my age (almost 45, which I optimistically consider the half-way mark) or my field of study (bioethics). Or, it could be that the need is… Continue Reading
I’m saddened by the recent Supreme Court ruling wherein the judges unanimously voted to remove restrictions on physician aid-in-dying. Many of my peers and friends are in support of this ruling and would perhaps be surprised I feel differently. I… Continue Reading
I’ve just started Year 2, studying bioethics. I’m due to graduate in 2016 with a Master of Science in Bioethics (policy specialization), from “The Bioethics Program of Union Graduate College and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai”. (I was… Continue Reading
“[Foucault’s] concept of technologies of self reveals that individuals participate in the policing process by monitoring their own behaviour… The power operating in technologies of self is not based in force but “in the exercise of self upon self by… Continue Reading
