Rehumanizing Medicine
Fast food medicine is a growing issue in the United States. The term fast-food medicine refers to a model of the medical industry that prioritizes money over the health of patients. The most effective way to address the problem of fast-food medicine is by having healthcare professionals be educated in the arts and humanities in addition to all the STEM requirements that exist for pursuing a career in healthcare. In my own experience, music and other forms of media were able to educate me on the diverse issues that different people face. Thus, I was able to cultivate awareness, genuine concern, and empathy for human beings and the obstacles they face. As an aspiring healthcare professional, this is significant because I know that I want to go into the field of medicine because I genuinely care about other people instead of money.
This humanized model of medicine, in which healthcare professionals work in the industry simply because they care about others, is called the art of medicine. As an aspiring healthcare professional, I need to move towards the humanized art of medicine model and away from the dehumanized model of fast-food medicine. This needs to happen because if I, an aspiring healthcare professional, were to put my own desires before my patients’ needs, my future patients would suffer by not receiving the best care possible. By using arts and humanities to cultivate understanding and empathy, I can move closer to the art of medicine, which is the ideal model that all aspiring and current healthcare professionals should follow and strive for.
The dehumanized institution of fast-food medicine can be seen in every corner of the healthcare industry. The problem of fast-food medicine could manifest as prescribing a more expensive medication to make more money or having an unethical system in place that prevents hospitals from providing unique care and attention to each individual patient. The issue of fast-food medicine was brought to my attention through Tig Notaro’s comedy album LIVE when she discusses and mocks the actions of the hospital in response to her mother’s death. She mentions “the hospital sent my mother a questionnaire to see how her stay at the hospital went. Not great, did not go great. But yeah that seems reasonable. Really exquisite customer service. Great attention to detail. I’ll get that [the questionnaire] right to her.” Not only can her mother not fill out the survey because she passed away, but she can’t fill out the survey because she was completely brain dead during her stay at the hospital. This is an example of fast-food medicine because this survey demonstrates that the hospital uses the same systematic method of treating everyone. Once the hospital got their money, the workers didn’t really pay any attention or care about what happened to the patient after. The only reason for having such a system to treat patients in this dehumanizing manner is to maximize efficiency and profits. If the physicians or other workers actually cared about the patient, they would recognize that there is no reason to send that survey to Notaro’s mother.
Comedy, being an art, played a large role in allowing me to understand why and the extent to which fast-food medicine exists in the healthcare system. Comedy provided Tig Notaro a lighthearted space to appropriately shed light on a sensitive issue of how the hospital treated her mother’s death. When I listened to LIVE, I felt a lot more comfortable thinking about the dehumanization of medicine in this otherwise tragic experience of Tig Notaro because comedy is a lighthearted space that allows for teaching serious issues. So through Notaro’s comedy album, I became aware of the subtle ways that fast-food medicine exists in the healthcare system.
This awareness that I gained from Tig Notaro’s album will prevent me from blindly following the path that previous healthcare workers might have laid before me. By not blindly following the path of dehumanized medicine, I am humanizing my identity because I am preventing myself from unknowingly contributing to fast-food medicine by being aware of where the problem exists in the healthcare system. Thus, through developing awareness, an aspiring healthcare professional like myself will be able to move away from the dehumanized healthcare system and closer to a humanized system (the art of medicine).
I often refer to fast-food medicine as a dehumanized system because healthcare workers exploit the patients for their money by placing their own greed before the needs of their patients. In chapter 1 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed the author, Paulo Freire, explains that “It [humanization] is thwarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression, and the violence of the oppressors” and that this oppression is often justified through false generosity. When healthcare workers (the oppressors) prioritize their own greed, they are expressing the idea that they are more important and more human than their patients (the oppressed) and thus dehumanize the institution of medicine. This is what the hospital did with Notaro’s mother when the hospital failed to show that they actually care about their patients and what happens to them.
Healthcare workers are often able to justify this oppressive institution of fast-food medicine through false generosity. In chapter 1 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed Freire explains the concept of false generosity when he writes, “any attempt to ‘soften’ the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity… in order to have the continued opportunity to express their ‘generosity’, the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well.” Friere refers to false generosity as a method that the oppressors use to make their actions seem selfless and justify the institution of oppression that exists. By manipulating the altruistic view that society has on the industry of medicine, those who work in the industry of medicine are able to justify their actions as done in service for their patients even when the actions were actually done in service of oneself. In the case that a doctor prescribes a more expensive medication where a less expensive medication would’ve had the same effect, the doctor can justify this profitable action as altruistic. In other words, the doctor can hide their greed under the notion the expensive medication was prescribed out of necessity for the patient. This false generosity contributes to maintaining the institution of fast-food medicine
Freire’s discussion about humanity in Pedagogy of the Oppressed helped me understand the structures of oppressive institutions and how the system of fast-food medicine is able to exist and maintain itself in society. Understanding how fast-food medicine is able to exist in society helped me develop a genuine concern for people who are victims of exploitation who don’t even know they are being oppressed. It’s significant that I have a genuine concern for humanity because it would motivate me to provide patient-centered care where the needs of the patient dictate the treatment they receive and not my greed. Essentially, genuine concern and humanization, acquired from understanding how fast-food medicine is able to blindly exploit others, allow me, an aspiring healthcare professional, to rehumanize medicine to the art of medicine.
Empathy is also a fundamental aspect of the art of medicine model because empathy is what allows aspiring healthcare professionals, like me, to actually care about the people they are treating, and thus put the needs of the patient before our own. Music, being an art, played a significant role in helping me cultivate empathy for other people.
Music helped me realize the true struggles that diverse groups of people face by “unbanking” false knowledge that I had obtained from society which ultimately moved me away from dehumanized medicine. In the album, 4 Your Eyez Only, J. Cole explains the broken system of mass incarceration that people in underserved communities face, when he raps, “Took me two felonies to see this trap this crooked-ass system set for me…and the cyclical nature of doing time continues” (Cole, 2017). Music, specifically, helped me develop empathy because unlike typical monotonous STEM lectures, music made me feel emotions. A lecture is a dehumanizing way of distributing knowledge where only one person, the teacher, deposits or banks knowledge into the student. However, music is a form of education that takes into account multiple perspectives from different people. 4 Your Eyez Only, an album that is written in multiple perspectives of human beings, unbanked (for me) the false notion that all people receive fair consequences for their actions in our society. The album unbanked this false notion by allowing me to learn about and visualize the issue of mass incarceration from the perspective of someone who has experienced this issue. Viewing the issue from the perspective of a human being also makes me feel some of the pain and emotions that these human beings felt when dealing with the issue. By feeling their emotions, I am able to cultivate empathy and move towards the humanized form of medicine (the art of medicine).
I use the term “unbank” to emphasize the fact that society often “deposits” misconceptions about diverse groups of people into human beings. In chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Friere refers to the banking education system as a dichotomous form of education “in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor [of knowledge]”. This banking system in itself is a dehumanizing institution because it treats “knowledge as a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (Friere, 2000). Essentially in the banking system, those that are recipients of knowledge are seen as less human than those giving knowledge. This dehumanized system of education is demonstrated through a lecture style of learning where only one person is depositing knowledge into other people. However, music is a humanized way of learning because it is able to take into account the perspective of other people, unlike lectures. By being able to see problems like mass incarceration from the perspectives of people that face the problem, it allows me to feel some of the emotional pain that they felt in their struggles. Thus, feeling the emotions of other people is what helps me cultivate empathy.
Being able to feel just a portion of the pain that human beings in these diverse communities face every day allows me, an aspiring healthcare professional, to cultivate empathy and concern for what these people experience. Developing empathy is truly what humanizes my identity as an aspiring healthcare professional because empathy allows me to understand the idea that satisfying my own greed is not even a priority compared to the problems that other people face. My own “struggle” of being successful is irrelevant compared to the real struggles that people face such as being denied basic human rights. And understanding this idea is significant because my goal to rehumanize the institution of healthcare through the art of medicine by putting the patients’ needs before my own when I start working in the medical field. Thus, by carrying this empathy and concern for humanity with me on my journey as an aspiring healthcare professional, I am able to rehumanize the institution of healthcare through the art of medicine.
Before I can rehumanize medicine through the art of medicine, I need to humanize myself by cultivating empathy to motivate me, an aspiring healthcare professional, to move towards the art of medicine. Another part of this process of humanizing myself is being able to understand the irrelevance of money so that I could move away from fast-food medicine which is rooted in greed. J. Cole’s song “Love Yourz” (from my Reflection Playlist in WP2) played an important role in helping me understand the insignificance of money. In the track he raps,
“Always gon’ be a bigger house somewhere, but n*gga feel me
Long as the people in that motherf*cker love you dearly
Always gon’ be a whip that’s better than the one you got
Always gon’ be some clothes that’s fresher than the ones you rock
Always gon’ be a b*tch that’s badder out there on the tours
But you ain’t never gon’ be happy ’til you love yours
No such thing as a life that’s better than yours (Love yours)”
In this case, music played a big role in helping me devalue greed and move away from fast food medicine because these lyrics in the song put forward the idea that “it doesn’t matter what type of lifestyle you live because rich people and sad people both experience sadness and happiness; what matters is the people you surround yourself with” (Shah, 2020). Listening to this song humanized me because it helped me realize the true value of money from the perspective of someone who had a lot of money (J. Cole).
Essentially by understanding that money can’t buy happiness from these lyrics, I am able to see that money doesn’t have any profound value. This idea is significant to my identity as an aspiring healthcare professional because it prevents me from being a healthcare professional that will practice fast-food medicine which stems from greed. If I were to value money, I would be motivated to practice a form of medicine that puts my greed before the needs of others. However, the idea of understanding that money isn’t that important clears the path for empathy and genuine concern for humanity to motivate my practice of medicine. Thus, in the future as a healthcare professional, I am able to practice a form of medicine that prioritizes the needs of the patient. This will further implement the art of medicine and rehumanize the institution of healthcare because I would be practicing a form of medicine that treats the patient as a human being that deserves proper care instead of a form of medicine that views patients as an opportunity to gain money.
Through the arts and humanities, I have cultivated awareness, genuine concern, and empathy. As an aspiring healthcare professional, these three factors have contributed to the process of humanizing myself as an individual by helping me understand the idea that the needs of the patients I will one day treat will always be more significant than any greed I may have. By prioritizing the needs of others before my own desires, I am able to practice a humanistic approach to medicine which is the art of medicine and refrain from practicing the dehumanized approach which is fast-food medicine.
Work Cited
Notaro, T. (2013). No Questionnaires to Dead People. On LIVE.
Freire, Paulo. (2000) Pedagogy of the oppressed /New York: Continuum
Cole, J. (2017) 4 Your Eyez Only. On 4 Your Eyez Only.
Shah, A. (2020, October 11). Reflection. Retrieved October 24, 2020, from https://medium.com/a-musical-journey/reflection-2b4fca62b652
Cole, J. (2014) Love Yourz. On 2014 Forest Hills Drive.
