As part of the Clinical Reasoning Series, Dr Oliver Thomson speaks with Prof. Bjørn Hofmann about the ethics and moral implications of disease.
Show Notes
Welcome to another episode of The Words Matter Podcast.
We continue the clinical reasoning series, and I hope you enjoyed the first two episodes with
Roger Kerry and
Mark Jones where we covered how we can think about our practice, evidence and our patients.
However, given that the series is exploring clinicians’ reasoning around people with disease, it would seem prudent to consider what disease is both as a concept and phenomena but also the ethical and moral issues tied to and emanating from it and which motivate us to begin to reason about it.
Bjørn is a scholar in philosophy of medicine and bioethics with a special interest in the relationship between epistemology and ethics.
He is affiliated with the Department of Health Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the Centre for Medical Ethics at the University of Oslo. Bjørn's main fields of interests include the basic concepts for health care including disease, causality, (over)diagnosis, medicalization and severity.
In this episode we speak about:
- What we mean when we say ‘disease’?
- Disease as both a concept and phenomena and how the concept of disease provides us with knowledge and guides our actions.
- Disease from a biological perspective, the experience of disease which we term called illness, and the societal perspective we call sickness.
- How these perspectives interact and how they might at times be in conflict with each other.
- We consider disease an an experienced phenomenon with a scientific description and a moral imperative
- We discuss the the moral functions, and why are they of great importance to patients and us as health professionals?
- And finally we touch on how the science and the ethics of disease relate.
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What is The Words Matter Podcast with Oliver Thomson?
The Words Matter Podcast brings you insights, reflections and conversations focused on the latest evidence, theory, philosophy and practice of communication-focused healthcare.
Find out about the more tacit, 'softer' and personal side of clinical practice such as the role of philosophy, beliefs, behaviours, developing therapeutic relationships or the purposeful use of language with people experiencing pain from expert academics, clinicians and researchers from across the world and spanning the musculoskeletal disciplines. This podcast will help you reflect on your own current practice and inform and stimulate you to consider new ways of approaching your practice and patients, to create a better clinical experience and outcomes in people with musculoskeletal pain.
Hosted by Dr Oliver Thomson PhD, an osteopath and Associate Professor who is passionate about researching and educating clinicians on a revised narrative, communication and biopsychosocial approach to musculoskeletal therapy. If you like the podcast, subscribe and check out the online learning and resources at www.wordsmatter-education.com.
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