The Clinic & The Person
The Clinic and The Person is a podcast developed to summon or quicken the attention of health care professionals, their educators, researchers and others to the interests and plights of people with specific health problems aided through knowledge and perspectives the humanities provide. We are guided by how physician-writer Iona Heath sees the arts adding a view to biomedicine “that falls from a slightly different direction revealing subtly different detail” and how that view applies to particular health care situations. Our aim is to surface these views, and our desire is to present them in ways that encourage and enable health care professionals to fully engage, to consider all sources, not just biomedical, in their roles helping people with their particular health problems.
“The Clinic” represents all that Biomedicine brings to bear on disease processes and treatment protocols, and “The Person,” represents all that people experience from health problems. Our episodes draw from works in the humanities—any genre—that relate directly to how people are affected by specific clinical events such as migraine headaches, epileptic seizures, and dementia, and by specific health care situations such as restricted access to care and gut-wrenching, life and death choices. We analyze and interpret featured works and provide thoughts on how they apply in patient care and support; health professions education; clinical and population research; health care policy; and social and cultural influences and reactions.
The Clinic & The Person
Getting Dopesick: Four Angles on the Opioid Crisis
We feature four different angles addressing the opioid crisis, mostly as the opioid product OxyContin is involved and as the Appalachian region is affected. Our objective is to show how realms outside Biomedicine—the Humanities, in this case—can provide a range of perspectives suited to preferences, interests, and needs for understanding a particular issue. The four angles we feature are: nonfiction investigative journalism; nonfiction dramatization; narrative nonfiction; and literary fiction. We consider different approaches to selecting the best choice or the best order among available options.
Source Citations:
Macy B. Dopesick. New York; Little, Brown, and Company, 2018
Strong D. Dopesick. John Goldwyn Productions, 2021 (streamed on Hulu)
Keefe PR. Empire of Pain. New York; Doubleday, 2021.
Kingsolver B. Demon Copperhead; Harper, 2022. (Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
Links:
Russell Teagardens According to the Arts blog pieces mentioned in the podcast:
- Dopesick (nonfiction book – investigative)
- Dopesick (TV miniseries)
- Empire of Pain (narrative nonfiction)
- Demon Copperhead (novel)
Russell Teagarden’s article in The Pharos comparing Dopesick (the book and the TV miniseries) with Demon Copperhead
Recommendations:
Barbara Kingsolver in conversation with Beth Macy (Nov 2, 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSglbhS1-WU&t=15s
De Quincey T. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. New York; Penguin Classics, 2003. (See Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on this book here.)
Daudet A. In the Land of Pain. (Translator Julian Barnes) New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. (See Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on this book here.)
Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.
Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.
Executive producer: Anne Bentley
