Seeing and Hearing the Patient: Technology and Power

Question 1

What was significant about the x-ray?

Answer 1

For the first time, we can really see inside the patient–don’t have to cut open.
-Physicians no longer “looking in your rye” they are “looking throughoyou”

Question 2

When was the “explosion” in medical technology and scientific theory?

Answer 2

20th century.

Question 3

Where was medicine largely consolidated?

Answer 3

In institutions (hospitals, university ties)

Question 4

What became the first point of contact rather than the last resort?

Answer 4

going to clinical facilities

Question 5

What gave rise to sub0specialities?

Answer 5

professional authority stabilized

Question 6

What world events stimulated interest and attracted resources in medicine?

Answer 6

the world wards

Question 7

What kind of funding led to medical industries expanding?

Answer 7

government, industry, and philanthropic organizations like the rockefellers

Question 8

What did medical funding lead to?

Answer 8

• More opportunities
• Concentration of resources ,more opportunities for experimentation
• Dramatic increase in money spent on it

Question 9

What country became the place for medical education and innovation?

Answer 9

the US

Question 10

In the 20th century, what are their new investments in?

Answer 10

-Diagnostic technology

laboratory studies –> urine samples, etc.

Question 11

In the 20th century, what was there a greater dependence on?

Answer 11

Laboratory studies for diagnostics

Question 12

What did an increased dependence on diagnostic studies lead to?

Answer 12

increased training and sub-specialization

Question 13

Do these investments and the increasing use of medical technology in particular, modernize medicine?

Answer 13

• Lots of accidents that were made rational justified
• Not just technology aspects that make medicine modern
• What is ‘modern’? Is ‘modern’ always better?

Question 14

What was the efficiency craze?

Question 15

The was the efficiency craze?

Answer 15

turn of the 20th century

Question 16

How did technology become both a product and tool of the efficiency agenda?

Answer 16

• trying to imagine was to make things more efficient
• empirical reasoning
• mechanization of society –> universal trends

Question 17

What was ‘modern’ medicine subject to and participation in? How?

Answer 17

the standardization process

-medical examinations, vaccinations, inoculations.

Question 18

What changed about medical management in the 20th century?

Answer 18

• Healthcare as a business
• Record keeping
• Financial efficiency

Question 19

Hospitalization led to larger facilities, and a growing need for what?

Answer 19

-accounting departments (financial efficiency) and technology to support the ‘business’ of hospitals (record keeping)

Question 20

What is ‘modern medical technology”

Answer 20

• machines that enhance the functioning of the institution (typewriters, laundry facilities, dishwashers, etc)
• machines used directly on/for patients (MRIs, CAT/PET scanners, X-Rays).

Question 21

Why did we lost ability to describe what we are feeling?

Answer 21

dependence and reliance on machines to tell us something

Question 22

What did records (graphs, charts, lab reports) contribute to the need for?

Answer 22

higher levels of specialization and expertise to adequately (and efficiently) analyst medical data

Question 23

What is laboratory medicine?

Answer 23

technology also used in clinical context, especially in laboratories
-in labs is where interpretation takes place, is where outcomes are predicted

Question 24

What takes place in the lab?

Answer 24

• make clinical decisions
• establish diagnoses
• make diagnoses
• guide therapies

Question 25

What is an example of using laboratory technology just to just it?

Answer 25

-Urinalysis become routine part of hospital visit, regardless of illness/ailment

Question 26

What were the new layers of investigation that urinalysis combined with?

Answer 26

• chemical
• gravity
• sugar content
• colour
• smell

Question 27

Urinalysis therefore used at___(diagnostic), but also to chart a partings___.

Answer 27

• outset

- prognosis

Question 28

What follows a similar path of urinalysis?

Answer 28

blood tests

Question 29

What do blood tests and urine tests, etc. do to patients with their diseases?

Answer 29

distances patient from diseases (feel alienated)

Question 30

When was the x-ray discovered?

Answer 30

1895

Question 31

Who discovered the x-ray?

Answer 31

wilhem conrad rontgen

Question 32

How did the x-ray work?

Answer 32

• passed electoral current through a cathode-ray tube and produced a new form of radiation
• radiation penetrated solid objects and could be used to produce photographic images

Question 33

What was the x0ray the first opportunity to look through?

Answer 33

flesh without surgery

Question 34

Why did he call them x-ray?

Answer 34

because he didn’t know what they are made of

Question 35

What did the x-ray influence?

Answer 35

• influenced medical and popular attitudes towards bodies

- changed the way we thought about the body

Question 36

Did hospitals increasingly purchase x-rays?

Answer 36

yes

Question 37

What did the x-ray become?

Answer 37

a symbol of advanced medicine

-modern cutting edge hospital

Question 38

Why was there some resistance towards the x-ray in the medical community?

Answer 38

Belief that reliance on x-ray reduced the thoroughness of a patient examination

• reduced emphasis on doctor’s interpretation
• wouldn’t require a medical specialist
• contributed to the idea that medicine is more objective

Question 39

What did medical technology add to the complexity of the hospital system?

Answer 39

efficience, scientific, technological, objective

Question 40

How did medical technology contribute to sub-specialization?

Answer 40

radiologists, lab techs

Question 41

What is the relationship between medical records and medical technology?

Answer 41

new tests fave rise to new administrative needs (patients charts and files)

Question 42

What was Thomas Laquer’s critique of medical technology?

Answer 42

“Instead of being the consequent of increased scientific knowledge, new ways of looking at the body were…new ways of representing an idea of constituting social realities”

• Critical of medical technology moving to a rational way of looking at body
• Doesn’t allow us to see something more clearly, just reinforces what we want to see.

Question 43

How were medical technologies employed to reinforce social constructed meanings?

Answer 43

Imaging technologies, for example avoid subjective, critical analysis, and instead confirm (or look for) characteristics that reinforce identities (gender, race, disease, health)
-It privileges medical evidence and medical expertise

Question 44

What does seeing the human body lead to with elements of humility, gender, race disability?

Answer 44

• seeing women’s bodies on the screen

- dr and patient relationship changes