Interesting read. As someone who has lived with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis for 34 years, I have experienced the worst of what healthcare has to offer. I have also known about some of the most compassionate intelligent doctors who saw the reality of ME.
With what I know, this statement concerned me "if a patient has medically unexplained symptoms..."
We keep seeing that the symptoms of ME (and long covid) are medically unexplained. But expert physicians and researchers wrote a primer in 2012 for doctors that explain the medical cause for many of our symptoms. ME International Consensus Primer for medical practitioners.
I also cringe when I hear medical practitioners push behavior modification as a path to a cure for ME. It exposes the systemic bias that all post viral diseases will self resolve with adequate support. Some will, but far too many will spend the rest of their life shuffling between specialists hoping for even a meager improvement to their quality of life.
Important, I think, is that you lay out some of the shortcoming of the approach of many in our current medical delivery system that favors pharmacology to treat symptoms over looking at the whole person and seeking solutions focused on supporting healing, vitality and health.
As one of the enlightened providers you interviewed conveyed as her approach, "Still emphasiz[ing] the central role of the physician in treating the health, appraising the body as a unit, and considering the important relationship between structural integrity and optimal function of all anatomical structures. ... there is focus on the tremendous self-healing, self-regulatory mechanisms always at work within the human being."
As mentioned, a lot to unpack within the post. You open with comments that suggest that it is our male dominated system and perhaps implicitly men, who hold us back. My personal professional experience suggests that (while fortunately relatively rare) it is the women with whom we work or interface who more frequently than men, pointedly target and undercut the professional lives of female colleagues.
You Emily are the anthropologist. Perhaps it would be interesting for you to address the driving forces that lead to this kind of behavior. It seems to me that we need to recognize it and call it out. We need to support the whole team as much as the whole person to optimize success in healthcare delivery.
Great piece - these women physician’s voices are much needed. Thank you for amplifying them!
Interesting read. As someone who has lived with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis for 34 years, I have experienced the worst of what healthcare has to offer. I have also known about some of the most compassionate intelligent doctors who saw the reality of ME.
With what I know, this statement concerned me "if a patient has medically unexplained symptoms..."
We keep seeing that the symptoms of ME (and long covid) are medically unexplained. But expert physicians and researchers wrote a primer in 2012 for doctors that explain the medical cause for many of our symptoms. ME International Consensus Primer for medical practitioners.
I also cringe when I hear medical practitioners push behavior modification as a path to a cure for ME. It exposes the systemic bias that all post viral diseases will self resolve with adequate support. Some will, but far too many will spend the rest of their life shuffling between specialists hoping for even a meager improvement to their quality of life.
Thanks for including info about Dr. Rowe. His work is referenced in that IC Primer. See links here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OLvCfM3HAZ4Yn_UELRWLXV8c3BTmwgnR/view
Interesting post with a lot to unpack.
Important, I think, is that you lay out some of the shortcoming of the approach of many in our current medical delivery system that favors pharmacology to treat symptoms over looking at the whole person and seeking solutions focused on supporting healing, vitality and health.
As one of the enlightened providers you interviewed conveyed as her approach, "Still emphasiz[ing] the central role of the physician in treating the health, appraising the body as a unit, and considering the important relationship between structural integrity and optimal function of all anatomical structures. ... there is focus on the tremendous self-healing, self-regulatory mechanisms always at work within the human being."
As mentioned, a lot to unpack within the post. You open with comments that suggest that it is our male dominated system and perhaps implicitly men, who hold us back. My personal professional experience suggests that (while fortunately relatively rare) it is the women with whom we work or interface who more frequently than men, pointedly target and undercut the professional lives of female colleagues.
You Emily are the anthropologist. Perhaps it would be interesting for you to address the driving forces that lead to this kind of behavior. It seems to me that we need to recognize it and call it out. We need to support the whole team as much as the whole person to optimize success in healthcare delivery.