Wednesday, 13 November 2013
12:30-1:30 pm
Jordan Conference Center Auditorium
University of Virginia School of Medicine
Topic: SLOW MEDICINE, FAST MEDICINE: TAKING A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
Victoria Sweet, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, and author,
God’s Hotel, San Francisco CA
When
Dr. Victoria Sweet returned to school to pursue a Ph.D. in the history
of medicine, she also went to work at San Francisco’s
Laguna Honda Hospital, the last almshouse in the United States, a
descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God’s Hotel), where the sick received care
in the Middle Ages. Laguna Honda provides the site for Dr. Sweet's
prize-winning book,
God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine, in which she weaves together premodern medicine, as exemplified in the 12th century Latin writings of Hildegard of Bingen; her own clinical stories, the politics
of modern health care, and the pilgrimage she walked to Santiago de Compostela.
In this Medical Center Hour, Dr. Sweet offers evidence—in stories of
her patients and her hospital—for some radically new ideas about
medicine and health
care. Have our attempts to control health care costs by privileging
"efficiency" headed us down a wrong path? Might medicine work best—that
is, arrive at the right diagnosis and the right treatment for the least
money—when it is personal and face-to-face,
when the doctor has enough time to do a good job, and when she pays
attention not only to the patient but also to what is around the
patient? Dr. Sweet calls this approach “Slow Medicine” and believes that
its practice would be both better and more satisfying
for patients and doctors alike and also less costly.
