The social medicine reader

Social Medicine Reader provides a survey of the challenging issues facing today's health care providers, patients, and caregivers by bringing together moving narratives of illness, commentaries by physicians, debates about complex medical cases, and conceptually and empirically based writings by scholars in medicine, the social sciences, and the humanities. Volume 2, Differences and Inequalities, explores the fundamental sociocultural, socioeconomic, and racial dimensions that shape health differences and inequalities. These include social and cultural influences on the meanings of health, illness, and disease; social factors in the development of biomedical knowledge and systems of care; and structural explanations for why some social groups experience disproportionate burdens of disease and differences in treatment. The Reader is essential reading for all medical students, physicians, and health care providers. --From publisher's description.

Volume 1. Ethics and cultures of biomedicine -- Part I. Experiences of illness and clinician-patient relationships -- Silver water / Amy Bloom -- "Is she experiencing any pain?" : disability and the physician-patient relationship / S.K. Toombs -- The cost of appearances / Arthur Frank -- The ship pounding / Donald Hall -- God at the bedside / Jerome Groopman -- The use of force / William Carlos Williams -- Sunday Dialogue : conversations between doctor and patient / Rebecca Dresser -- What the doctor said / Raymond Carver -- Part II. Professionalism and the culture of medicine -- The learning curve / Atul Gawande -- The perfect code / Terrence Holt -- Coeur d'Alene / Richard B. Weinberg -- The "worthy" patient : rethinking the "hidden curriculum" in medical education / Robin T. Higashi, Allison Tillack, Michael A. Steinman, C. Bree Johnston, and G. Michael Harper -- How doctors think : clinical judgment and the practice of medicine / Kathryn Montgomery -- Healing skills for medical practice / Larry R. Churchill and David Schenck -- The hair stylist, the corn merchant, and the doctor : ambiguously altruistic / Lois Shepherd -- Necessary accessories / Nusheen Ameenuddin -- The criti…