[Discussion] CFP: The Patient (1/31/06; 10/18/06-10/19/06)

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

From: Harold Schweizer <schweizr@bucknell.edu>

The Patient: A Symposium, Bucknell University, October 18 & 19, 2006

Precariously situated between home and hospital, work and bed, life and death,
the patient occupies a liminal, unstable position. Charged to identify with her
state as with the moral virtue from which she receives her name, the patient
also lives in the fear of our indifference and impatience. Although attended by
doctors, nurses, family and friends, her condition - particularly if it is
chronic - ever threatens to sever her connections with the world and to exile
her into that fundamental solitude owned by the sick and suffering.

Immersed within a society and medical system that seeks optimum outcomes linked
to zero errors, the patient receives care delivered with industrial efficiency.
Advances in diagnostic and therapeutic modalities provide both cure and control
of chronic illness not imagined a decade ago. Poised to benefit on multiple
fronts, she should be increasingly satisfied with the medical encounter; and
yet, many patients feel alienated or even violated by the efficiency of the
medical system. What defines a quality medical encounter from her perspective?
What do medical practitioners - nurses, physicians, social workers - value in
their relationship with the patient? How is this relationship preserved and=20
nurtured? What are the opportunities or perils in the physician-patient
relationship?

It seems timely to counteract the quantification of the patient by the health
care industry and to call for a humanistic reconstitution of the patient's
experience and situation, to reconsider, rethink, and emphatically re-imagine
the patient in her environments, ancient and contemporary, intimate and social.
Papers written from a humanistic or medical perspective addressing the following
topics are invited:

- the patient in literary contexts
- the patient in film
- the dying patient
- the patience of the patient
- the patient and communication
- the ill and the well
- the chronic patient
- the quality medical encounter from the perspective of the patient
- patient satisfaction
- the quality medical encounter from the perspective of the physician
- physician satisfaction

Submit one page abstracts and a short CV by January 31, 2006. The symposium will
be held on the campus of Bucknell University, October 18 and 19, 2006. A
selection of papers will be published by Apercus: Histories, Texts, Cultures.

Harold Schweizer, Chair				Michael Foltzer, MD
Department of English				Geisinger Medical Center
Bucknell University				100 N Academy MC21-11
Lewisburg, PA 17837  				Danville, PA 17822
schweizr@bucknell.edu				mafoltzer@geisinger.edu




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