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The Woman In The Mirror Summary

Decent Essays

In Dr. Hyler’s article, “The Woman in the Mirror: Humanities in Medicine”. He contends the importance of studying the Humanities for physicians to be successful doctors.
The article begins with an anecdote of his experience with a woman who came into the ER with chest pain. The patient had apparently stopped taking Plavix and claimed that the reason was that she didn’t have enough money to use a bus to go fill her free prescription of the medicine at the pharmacy. After introducing the anecdote, the author emphasizes the ridiculousness of the situation, like the fact that the doctors spent “$7,000 on a sent” for a patient that didn’t have housing or food. I agree with the author that this relates directly to the other side of medicine that …show more content…

However, the author’s point makes sense in that while doctors may study Humanities in order to better grasp the values of their patients it is difficult because the values aren’t exactly reflected now that the Internet and other sources are full of ideas which are difficult to distinguish as true or …show more content…

He relates this experience to the fact that medicine is “anonymous, thankless, faceless, and uncertain” but also “necessary”. I think it is interesting how he feels that it is “necessary” that most of the practice of medicine is faceless. In my opinion, this may be a result of the field of medicine he is in. For some fields of medicine like emergency medicine, most doctors see the patient at the onset of the emergency and then rarely again. However, other doctors like Pediatricians or Family Medicine Physicians see their patients on a regular basis and in that case their practice of medicine, in my opinion, can’t be faceless or not caring about establishing empathy with

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