Medicine and Health Commons^™

Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton

Timothy D. Lytton

This essay critically evaluates Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s proposal to allow patients to prospectively waive their rights to bring a malpractice claim, presented in their recent, much acclaimed book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. We show that the behavioral insights that undergird Nudge do not support the waiver proposal. In addition, we demonstrate that Thaler and Sunstein have not provided a persuasive cost-benefit justification for the proposal. Finally, we argue that their liberty-based defense of waivers rests on misleading analogies and polemical rhetoric that ignore the liberty and other interests served by patients’ tort law rights. …

Consumer Behavior In The Health Marketplace: A Symposium Proceedings: Contents, Schedule, & Preface, Ian Newman

Ian Newman

This symposium grew out of informal departmental discussions seeking new ideas concerning the effectiveness of health education, particularly as it is applied to the purchase of health related products and services. Two specific objectives were established to guide the program: 1) to bring together a cross section of experts to discuss, each from his/her own perspective, issues of consumers and their behavior in purchasing health related goods and services. By providing a platform of notable speakers we hoped to achieve the second objective, to attract interested people from the university community, Lincoln, and surrounding communities. We hoped that new contacts …

Review Of After A Fall: A Sociomedical Sojourn By Laurel Richardson, Linda A. Treiber

Linda A. Treiber

This a review of Richardson, Laurel. 2013. After a Fall: A Sociomedical Sojourn. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. ISBN: 978-1-61132-317-7, paperback, 268 pages. The book is an example of an autoethnography, detailing Richardson's stay in a nursing home.

The Care-Cure Dichotomy: Nursing’S Struggle With Dualism

Linda A. Treiber

Development, Health And Race Differences In Fertility At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century In The U.S. South, Cheryl Elman, Andrew S. London, Robert A. Mcguire

Cheryl Elman

Mid-twentieth century demographers were puzzled to find that, between 1880 and 1910, fertility rates had dropped more precipitously among African American than U.S. white women. Since then, demographic research has focused on historical fertility differentials in the South, where most African Americans lived before 1920. Under a multiple causes model, two major sources of race differences have found some empirical support. One stresses that timing differences in voluntary fertility control, due to a high demand for child labor in tenant farming, sustained both high overall southern rural fertility rates and race differences, to about 1940. A second mechanism stresses that …

Pathological Frame And Functional Convenience Of Tuberculosis In Cambodia; Looking Beyond Detection And Treatment., Edson Kieu

Edson Kieu

Treatment for endemic diseases such as tuberculosis exists but these diseases continue to disproportionately plague those living in poverty. Tuberculosis is a complex public health issue and is a major challenge that defies pragmatic and instrumental treatment methods of detection and treatment. Currently, the causation of the disease is predominantly framed as a medical problem, which systematically excludes social variants, which narrows our understanding of treatment methodologies. By employing actor-network theory as a comprehensive scope for analysing interactions across varying stakeholders, I argue that there is vital need to view diseases as manifestations of social dysfunctions. Public health networks and …

Creating Healthy Community In The Postindustrial City, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

Capitalizing On Distinctiveness: Creating Wv For A New Economy, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

This article explores use of images and ideas of place to promote particular social and economic agendas within the regional context of Appalachia. Despite prevailing imageries of backwardness and isolation that adhere to the region, as well as recent history of often-bleak economic conditions, communities such as Huntington, West Virginia, are ideal places to observe inventive forms of community-building, place-making, and place-marketing that borrow from emerging cultural and economic models and stand in sharp contrast to a once dominant paradigm that encouraged capital investment by relying simply on tax breaks and the provision of cheap land and labor to attract …