- Maker: Holland Cutrell
- Genre: Manifesto/Holistic Care
- Level: Graduate
- Program: Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media
- Course: WRIT 5340: Multimodality & Digital Media
- Instructor: Dr. Eric Mason
- Semester Created: Winter 2021
Description:
A Doctor’s Manifesto is just as it sounds- a published declaration of good and fair practices all doctors (especially osteopathic medical professionals) should follow to ensure the best total health of their patients. It contains a list of 6 best practices, short descriptions of each, and suitable accompanying graphics behind the image to make it appealing for viewing.
Reflection:
Before my decision to pursue an English Writing and Rhetoric program of study, I completed extensive coursework, clinical hours, and volunteer work in the medical field (4 years to be exact). During the course of my studies and experience, I found what I thought was a fundamental standard of care missing from most students’ and teachers’ philosophies.
The standard was that of treating the patient as a human being, not treating their symptoms and neglecting the rest of their health. Too often, doctors advocate medicines to patients to get kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies rather than request their patients change their diets or lifestyle habits. Instead of looking at the entire body, doctors focus their efforts on a single symptom. Their methods do not take the whole system into account- every part of the human body is interconnected and works together to function correctly. If one part of the body is malfunctioning, it’s quite possible another is contributing to bodily failure and sickness; hence the importance of viewing the patient as a person, not a machine that needs fixing.
Nutrition, physical activity, and mental health are disregarded as secondary concerns when selecting a medicated treatment (easily seen by the side effects on every pharmaceutical drug). The final point all doctors should follow is listening. Doctors have gone to school for years, studied hard, and know a great deal about the human body- this is common knowledge; however, after practicing for years, many practicing physicians start to believe they understand their patients’ bodies better than said patient, and this leads to physicians jumping to conclusions about a patient’s condition. Listening carefully and thoughtfully will solve the problem of impersonalized care many people are receiving. Essentially, I wanted this manifesto to stand for more of an osteopathic (whole body/holistic care) approach to medicine with a major focus on the patient rather than the symptoms.
