PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Martin Donohoe

Publications and source records attributed to Martin Donohoe.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Increase in obstacles to abortion: the American perspective in 2004.

This paper summarizes the barriers to abortion in the United States, including the determination of viability, cost and insurance coverage, waiting periods and parental consent laws, restrictions on medical abortion, provider unavailability, harassment, targeted regulation of abortion providers laws, refusal clauses, anti choice laws, and the fetal legal rights movement. Federally subsidized abstinence-only sex education, which has not been shown to decrease the rate of unintended pregnancy (and may increase it), has expanded and access to a full range of contraceptive options has been limited. The policies of the current and past administrations have strengthened barriers to abortion both at home and abroad. Preserving women's right to choose will require improved public and professional education, legislative and legal efforts, and advocacy by physicians and other health care professionals.

Abortion, Legal↗
PubMed2004

A community-based approach to the medical humanities.

BACKGROUND: This paper discusses the rationale behind, and an approach to, the development of a graduate level interdisciplinary curriculum in literature and health care that incorporates community-based learning. Such an innovative approach emerges from the recognition that professional training in both health care and humanities programmes often does not model the kinds of collaborative relationships and professional values desired by contemporary health care students, providers and patients. METHOD: Recent trends in literary study and the medical humanities are described, along with the function (and benefits to students) of interdisciplinary classrooms and the role of community-based learning in higher education. The authors discuss their experiences teaching, and offer students' responses to medical humanities courses from which the concept for such a curriculum evolved. The paper offers advice on developing, evaluating and disseminating such a model curriculum for medical, nursing and graduate literature students. PROPOSAL: By linking health care with graduate English literature students, such a course would promote dialogue and understanding among health professionals, enhance student awareness of the effects of illness on patients, their caregivers and families, and encourage student activism and community service. A common set of literary works would provide a shared vocabulary and opportunities for ethical, critical and personal response. Working together in a community-based project, students from different programmes would learn to appreciate alternative professional and lay perspectives on common experiences.

Community Health Services↗
PubMed2004

Luxury primary care, academic medical centers, and the erosion of science and professional ethics.

Medical schools and teaching hospitals have been hit particularly hard by the financial crisis affecting health care in the United States. To compete financially, many academic medical centers have recruited wealthy foreign patients and established luxury primary care clinics. At these clinics, patients are offered tests supported by little evidence of their clinical and/or cost effectiveness, which erodes the scientific underpinnings of medical practice. Given widespread disparities in health, wealth, and access to care, as well as growing cynicism and dissatisfaction with medicine among trainees, the promotion by these institutions of an overt, two-tiered system of care, which exacerbates inequities and injustice, erodes professional ethics. Academic medical centers should divert their intellectual and financial resources away from luxury primary care and toward more equitable and just programs designed to promote individual, community, and global health. The public and its legislators should, in turn, provide adequate funds to enable this. Ways for academic medicine to facilitate this largesse are discussed.

Academic Medical Centers↗
PubMed2003

Causes and health consequences of environmental degradation and social injustice.

Worldwide the greatest effects on the health of individuals and populations results from environmental degradation and social injustice, operating in consort. This paper describes the national and global causes and health consequences of these phenomena. Causes include overpopulation, pollution, deforestation, global warming, unsustainable agricultural and fishing practices, overconsumption, maldistribution of wealth, the rise of the corporation, the Third World debt crisis, and militarization and wars. Consequences include increased poverty, overcrowding, famine, weather extremes, species loss, acute and chronic medical illnesses, war and human rights abuses, and an increasingly unstable global situation that portends Malthusian chaos and disaster. Because of their scientific training, and due to their privileged socioeconomic status, physicians are in a unique position to recognize these phenomena and to act at all levels, from interactions with their patients, to volunteerism, to service and intervention in areas of great need, to direct political activism and involvement. Specific suggestions for action are discussed.

Capitalism↗
PubMed2003

Advice for young investigators: historical perspectives on scientific research.

Physicians attempting to carry out well-executed scientific investigations require an historical perspective; an awareness of our ignorance; an imagination unencumbered by scientific prejudices; originality, curiosity and imagination; patience and persistence in the face of frustration; adaptability and perseverance; a critical spirit of evaluation and willingness to question dogma; devotion to the search for truth; and an awareness of those responsibilities to individuals and to society which define the medical profession. This paper explores, through the words of famous scientists, philosophers and authors, the process of scientific investigation and discusses those qualities that investigators can develop to become more insightful and successful researchers.

Biomedical Research↗
PubMed2003

Health issues of migrant and seasonal farmworkers.

This paper describes the socioeconomic conditions under which the 3 to 5 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the United States live. Health consequences resulting from occupational hazards and from poverty, substandard living conditions, migrancy, language and cultural barriers, and impaired access to health care are described. Specific problems include infectious diseases, chemical- and pesticide-related illnesses, dermatitis, heat stress, respiratory conditions, musculoskeletal disorders and traumatic injuries, reproductive health problems, dental diseases, cancer, poor child health, inadequate preventive care, and social and mental health problems. By increasing awareness among health care professionals of the plight of migrant and seasonal farmworkers, the authors hope to encourage development of a stronger public health infrastructure and to improve the health status of these individuals.

Agricultural Workers' Diseases↗
PubMed2002

Reflections of physician-authors on death: literary selections appropriate for teaching rounds.

Physicians constantly confront to death and respond in a variety of ways to the many deaths that they witness and to their own sense of mortality. Student-doctors should be exposed, prior to and during their clinical training, to these different types of responses, so that they can prepare for their encounters with the "ultimate mystery" and realize that their own reactions, uncertainties and fears are neither unique or unnatural. Writings of physician-authors provide an ideal medium for this exposure. Despite improvements in death education in medical schools, studies have described trainees' desire for more education and have documented deficits in the care of dying patients. This paper briefly describes the responses of physician-authors and their fictional characters to death, in hopes of interesting students in reading and stimulating educators to use these and other literary selections in the classroom and on teaching rounds, in order to facilitate introspection and discussion. Examples of brief readings, which can be used on ward rounds, incorporated into discussions of critical incidents, or read during teachable moments in the outpatient clinic are provided.

Adaptation, Psychological↗