Going into Medical Anthropology 204 I wasn't very thrilled, especially not after hearing that it would take a lot of writing. However, now that the semester is over I can honestly say it was a class I actually enjoyed taking and it was about to grasp my attention each and every week, making it a little less painful to write essays each week :p Before taking this class when I thought about studying illnesses I only considered the biological aspects when really there are so many more. In order to be a successful medical professional I realized that it is very important to consider factors such as culture, beliefs, and values when coming up with a treatment plan that works for an individual.
The approach that I found the most helpful when trying to understand an illness would have to be the ethnomedical approach, which as mentioned is how different cultures practice the art of medicine. Sometimes I catch myself being very narrow minded and only thinking about the Western culture of medicine that I have grown so accustomed to. Being a future medical professional I have to get used to using a more anthropological mind set because I will be dealing with patients from all sorts of different backgrounds.
The most surprising thing I learned throughout the entire course would have to be video "Placebo: Cracking the Code". I found it shocking that most doctors (I believe they said 60% in some areas of the world) have prescribes a placebo. I not only found it shocking that placebo's were actually prescribes by many doctors but I was surprised to find out how the mind can really affect how a person reacts and or recovers from an illness. Prior to this class I knew that someones mindset did have an effect on how they recover but I had no idea that it actually played a much larger part and that there was a lot of scientific research to support this.
Now that I have completed the class I would describe medical anthropology to someone that know anything about the field as the study as a holistic approach to studying health, disease, and healthcare. I don't have any particular video/article in mind to recommend for future classes but I think it would be interesting to add more case studies for particular illness or illness narratives, because I found the illness narrative section to be quite interesting.
The approach that I found the most helpful when trying to understand an illness would have to be the ethnomedical approach, which as mentioned is how different cultures practice the art of medicine. Sometimes I catch myself being very narrow minded and only thinking about the Western culture of medicine that I have grown so accustomed to. Being a future medical professional I have to get used to using a more anthropological mind set because I will be dealing with patients from all sorts of different backgrounds.
The most surprising thing I learned throughout the entire course would have to be video "Placebo: Cracking the Code". I found it shocking that most doctors (I believe they said 60% in some areas of the world) have prescribes a placebo. I not only found it shocking that placebo's were actually prescribes by many doctors but I was surprised to find out how the mind can really affect how a person reacts and or recovers from an illness. Prior to this class I knew that someones mindset did have an effect on how they recover but I had no idea that it actually played a much larger part and that there was a lot of scientific research to support this.
Now that I have completed the class I would describe medical anthropology to someone that know anything about the field as the study as a holistic approach to studying health, disease, and healthcare. I don't have any particular video/article in mind to recommend for future classes but I think it would be interesting to add more case studies for particular illness or illness narratives, because I found the illness narrative section to be quite interesting.