- In-Person
- $150
Can patients and healthcare practitioners stand closer together as they face the inevitability of illness and mortality?
From beginning to end, this course contemplates this important question. You're introduced to medical anthropology, the busy intersection between practitioners, patients and families as they face nature's ultimate democracy: the equalizing force of illness and death.
Explore ways that medical anthropology can enhance our understanding of the experience of illness and healthcare issues. Discover how this field can help improve how healthcare interventions are provided, and support the healing strategies of people living with illness every day.
As you delve into medical anthropology, you're encouraged to look for culture all around and where least expected, and examine some of the key values that form the foundation of medical culture. In so doing, you'll come face-to-face with the human, experiential side of illness.
Dr. DAN SMALL, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at UBC. For 20 years, Dan has been active in the fields of medical regulation, medical assessment, the forensic psychiatric system and community mental health.
Course outline
Lecture 1: Introduction to Medical Anthropology: Culture in the Context of Healthcare
Lecture 2: Healers and the Culture of Medicine
Lecture 3: Illness in the Lifeworld: Medical Anthropology, Meaning and the Narrative Analysis of Lived Experience
Lecture 4: Medical Anthropology and Cancer
Lecture 5: Medical Anthropology: Application, Activism and AIDS; North America's first Supervised Injection Facility