Peabody club
Medical Humanities
Peabody Club is named for Sir Francis Peabody who so famously said, “The Secret of caring for the patient is to care for the patient.” This is the curriculum that will help you to connect to your patients as people.
Cultural Competency
To care for a patient effectively, a physician must engender trust. Being trustworthy is not just about truth telling. As we can see all around us, many patients’ belief systems or health literacy does not allow them to trust their physician even when the physician is being sincere. Cultural Competency is attained when we can reach a patient whose background and belief system is not like our own.
Visual literacy
William Osler is credited with the adminition to bedside clinicians, “Listen to the patient. He will tell you the diagnosis.” But what can a good clinician gather from looking at the patient. What kind of observer are you. This exercise encourages learners to put down their phones and begin to develop a sense of situational awareness. We will explore the world of information that will help us to care for our patients and for each other. Let’s try it together.
Care of Vulnerable Populations
All patients are people. All patients deserve the best achievable outcomes. Some patients need more care than other. Vulnerable patients trust us to provide that care. Vulnerable patients are elderly, or chronically ill, or terminally ill. Or they are patients who are routinely objectified or ignored or who experience bias because of who they are. We must learn the special needs of geriatric patients, those with HIV, patients identifying as LGBTQ+, patients with mental illness in order to be of service to all.
Medical Ethics
Just because we can do a thing doesn’t always mean that we should. Biomedical ethics helps you to apply moral and professional principles to the recommendations we make to our patients. Always remember that it is the patient who “runs the case”. All we can do as physicians is to present the information that patients need to decide on the best management. This is the essence of doctor as teacher.
Palliative Care
The essence of internal medicine is not always to cure. It is to relieve suffering. The palliative specialist treats the symptoms of suffering: pain, shortness of breath, anxiety, depression, and others. Palliative care includes caring for patients with advanced illness, terminal illness, and helps patients in choosing goals of care.