Description:

Sarah Rodriguez, PhD
Lecturer, Medical Education
Lecturer, Global Health
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities

A ‘Non-Standard Practice of Gynecology’: James Burt’s ‘Love Surgery’ and Questions about Routine Medical Innovation

In the mid-1950s, obstetrician gynecologist James Burt began modifying episiotomy repair. By the mid-1970s, Burt began offering what he called ‘love surgery’ as an elective to women, while continuing to perform it on his obstetric patients. Burt practiced medicine until early 1989, a few months after a group of women upon whom he had performed love surgery accused him on national television of performing an experimental surgery on them without their informed consent. After this negative exposure, Burt was pressured to give up his medical license. The Burt story received a good deal of local and national media attention following the television show, and the stories typically followed the same theme: that Burt performed an experimental operation on trusting women without their consent and that other doctors in the community knew about it but did nothing. This narrative frames Burt as a freakish physician practicing outside the norms of medical practice, one allowed to do so by his peers. But this narrative fails to include questions about routine medical innovation the Burt story brings forth. In this paper I unpack the dominant narrative of Burt and consider his development of love surgery within normative surgical development, routine medical innovation, and within the historical context of the clinical practice of informed consent for routine procedures since the 1950s.

Description:

Teresa A. Savage, PhD, RN
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities

Clinical and Ethical Issues in Assessing Capacity

This lecture will review the clinical aspects of assessing decision-making capacity as well as the ethical issues with depression, anosognosia, adjustment to disability, and dignity of risk.

Description:

Catherine Belling, PhD
Associate Professor, Medical Education
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities

Dark Zones: Imagining the Ebola Body

Why does Ebola virus disease have such a disproportionate hold on anxious imaginations? This talk considers the cultural, clinical, and public health implications of how the biomedical aspects of Ebola are represented in Western media.

Description:

Rebecca Brashler, LCSW
Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities

Professional Boundaries: Working in Hospitals During the Holidays

This workshop will review the ways clinicians can balance their desire to fully engage clients emotionally with the need to maintain appropriate boundaries. Our client’s problems, pain, anxiety and loneliness can feel overwhelming to us as clinicians if we over-identify with their situations or lose sight of our role as helping professionals. But if we are too detached, we may risk losing precious opportunities to relieve their suffering. These issues are often heightened between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day when both patients and staff struggle with not being at home with their families – whether due to illness or professional obligations. The realization that both patients and staff may share feelings of being deprived of normal family/social interactions over the holidays is a great starting point for a deeper discussion about our shared experiences and our need to thoughtfully construct caring relationships.

Description:

The Montgomery Lectures series addresses diverse topics within bioethics and the medical humanities. Presenters are faculty, affiliates, and alumni of the Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program--along with a few special guests. The lectures run every Thursday from noon to 12:45pm during The Graduate School's fall, winter, and spring quarters. They are open to students, faculty, and the general public. Formerly called "Special Topics in MH&B", this series was renamed in 2013 for Emeritus Professor Kathryn Montgomery.

The speaker and topic of this particular talk is yet to be announced.