The people who create popular media love to dramatize high-stakes health care situations, often to the point of outright misrepresentation. But as a society, we might suffer when medicine is misappropriated for entertainment. That is because patients, their loved ones and their care teams need health care settings to be places of peace.
In recent years, some scholars in bioethics have begun to argue that peace and health have a fundamentally causal relationship—not just in the context of global conflict, disease or disaster, but also in everyday life. The health sector, therefore, needs to give more attention to understanding and systemically promoting the positive determinants of societal health and peace.
The November issue of AMA Journal of Ethics® (@JournalofEthics) explores what it means to establish and maintain health care as an enterprise known less for drama or stress and more for healing and peace.
AMA Journal of Ethics is an editorially independent, peer-reviewed journal devoted to helping students and clinicians navigate ethical decisions in service to patients and communities. The November issue of AMA Journal of Ethics includes the following articles.
“Why Is Hospice One of the Few Health Care Environments Structured for Peace?”
- In hospice settings, structures and spaces of caregiving must promote peace. How could peace design be applied to more health care settings?
“Using Music to Teach Health Professions Students to Listen Closely and Promote Peace.”
- Close listening is a teachable skill set in which clinicians focus sensory attention on a patient and cultivate space before speaking.
“Government Obligations and the Negative Right to a Healthy Urban Environment.”
- Individuals and communities have rights to not have their space impinged upon by hostile urban plans, designs, or development.
“When a Patient Leaves Your Care, How Do You Want Them to Feel?”
- Skilled interactions in health care are those in which clinicians focus on making patients feel seen and heard and that their needs are important and can be met.
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Listen and learn
The journal’s November “Ethics Talk” podcast features a discussion with Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology, behavioral neuroscience and music at McGill University, in Montreal, and Judy Friesem, a certified therapeutic musician, about how music affects the brain and what role music can have in peacemaking in clinical settings.
The November issue also features nine author-interview podcasts and one editorial-fellow interview podcast. Listen to previous episodes of the “Ethics Talk” podcast or subscribe in iTunes or other services.
Also, CME modules drawn from this month’s issue are collected at the AMA Ed Hub™ AMA Journal of Ethics webpage.
The next issue of the journal will focus on evidence-based design in health care. Apply to be an AMA Journal of Ethics editorial fellow or senior editorial fellow and design a theme issue with us.
