A Matter of Perspective: An Examination of the Patient-Physician Relationship

Abstract

Daniella Conley titles her carefully orchestrated analysis of the multi-faceted patient-physician relationship “An Unbalanced Understanding,” and takes her epigraph from Anatole Broyard‘s classic text in Medical Humanities, “The Patient Examines the Doctor”: “To the typical physician, my illness is a routine incident in his rounds, while for me it‘s the crisis of my life.” One of the great strengths of her analysis is precisely the balance she herself maintains in considering this critical relationship from a number of angles: medical student as well as patient and physician; successes in medical communication as well as failures. Her thoughtful, lucidly written essay also adeptly weaves together examples from a range of texts, including some Daniella was led to by her own independent research and intellectual curiosity. The essay is a model of reading across and through disciplinary formations in the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of literature and health studies.

—Dr. Marjorie Stone