Phorest & Trees
Every month I share stuff I’ve been reading.
This month I’ve added the new R1s and a number of alumni to the list. Those
of you receiving this for the first time can access the old ones here. Hope you enjoy! |
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A Bit of (Personal)
Good News
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Thanks
to all of you for your kind words about my recent promotion to Clinical
Professor.
Copious gratitude to Drs. Kirshblum and Foye for
their persistent tenacity, encouragement, and filling out the copious
paperwork, without whom this wouldn’t have happened. Thanks to Chae for supporting
me formally and behind closed doors in ways I probably don’t even know about.
Some have asked why I bothered with this considering
there are no accompanying financial benefits whatsoever attached to a
non-tenure clinical promotion. I am happy to share my motivation. I did this
for my dad. He was so proud of me when i got the "assistant
professor" designation 15 years ago. When he passed in 2016, I decided
to work toward this in his honor. So hopefully he's smiling with pride
somewhere in the universe...
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AANEM and EDx
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On ReachMD, DOXIMITY
& MedPage
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Pain, Sports, MSK
& Rheum
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Ableism – an
inherently physiatric topic to consider
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Being
physiatrists, we pride ourselves on being knowledgeable advocates for
patients with disabilities. This
editorial tells one pediatric neurologist’s perspective and is full of
clickable references to support her assertions. After diving into small but
growing literature into it (only 312 references since 2006), I have some
developing and conflicting thoughts on the topic which we can discuss in
person. Some stuff worth sharing: “ “[i]mmediately,
and from early life and thereafter, people perceive individuals with
disability as ‘vulnerable’ and of low competence, and, accordingly, treat
members of this group differently.”1 Consequently,
people with disabilities often continue to experience social devaluation on
account of their disabilities (i.e., ableism), despite the fact that the last
few decades have seen an increased awareness and a decreased social
acceptability of discrimination based on other characteristics such as race
(i.e., racism) and gender (i.e., sexism). People with disabilities thus
remain subjected to ableist attitudes in many sectors, including — often
especially — the health care system.” “Disability
scholar Fiona Kumari Campbell defines ableism as “a network of beliefs,
processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the
corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species-typical and
therefore essential and fully human. Disability then, is cast as a diminished
state of being human.”3 Campbell
delineates an inherent link between this deficit-based construction of
disability and a “biomedicalist stance,” which, since the Age of Reason, has
“played a critical intervening role in the lives of people with disability
and people with anomalous bodies or mentalities. Medicine has operated as the
primary paradigm not only for the treatment of disabled bodies but has also
shaped the way decision makers, legislators, families and society in general
think about and sense disability.” If
you’ve done any research, you’ve probably looked at quality of life as an
outcome measure. The very notion of QOL is scrutinized in this context “At
the heart of such decisions is what disability scholar Joel Reynolds has
termed the “ableist conflation” of disability, suffering and death: “wherever
operative, the ableist conflation flattens communication about disability to
communication about pain, suffering, hardship, disadvantage, morbidity, and
mortality.” “Medicine is, at
bottom, a discipline that thinks pathologically. According to a velocity
of knowledge that has exponentially increased since the 18th century via
scientific experimentation and technological advance, medicine functions
according to the basic idea that “healthy” is “normal” and “unhealthy” is
“abnormal.” The information medicine vends as truth is predicated on this
distinction. In a recent piece in CMAJ,
Heidi L. Janz writes that disabled people “remain subjected to ableist
attitudes in many sectors, including — often especially — the
health care system.”7 The reason, as
Janz correctly identifies, is based in medicine’s presumption that “not
normal” is the same as “unhealthy.” I wish to include ill physicians in
Janz’s formulation, for the same oppressive forces medicine wields against
its subjects, it also wields against itself.” “In science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, disabled people
remain a significantly underrepresented part of the workforce. Recent
data suggests that about 20% of undergraduates in the United States have
disabilities, but representation in STEM fields is consistently lower than in
the general population. Of those earning STEM degrees, only about 10% of
undergraduates, 6% of graduate students, and 2% of doctoral students identify
as disabled. This suggests that STEM fields have difficulty recruiting and
retaining disabled students, which ultimately hurts the field, because
disabled scientists bring unique problem-solving perspectives and
input.” Even though the topic is relatively new to me
to consider, there is a curriculum for
medical students |
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Trees
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