Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: confidence

  • “Avoid a remedy that is worse than the disease”

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Hair loss in child with tinea capitis infection. CDC, 1970. Public domain. Overconfidence is an undesirable quality. It does not enhance a physician’s approach to learning, nor to changing when change is needed. How a doctor diagnoses or treats a condition today may cause future generations of physicians to wonder,…

  • Children treating children: Anne Shirley as clinician

    Kathryne Dycus Madrid, Spain   First edition cover of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, published 1908. Cover art by George Fort Gibbs (1870—1942). Public Domain. Childhood classics provide a range of illness narratives, reminding readers of dangers now preventable and even treatable, but also of the universal imperatives of understanding and accommodating…

  • Are we culturally tone-deaf?

    Clara Koo New York, United States   Hahoe Folk Village Mask Dance. Ian Sewell. July 2008. Accessed via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 2.5 The cultural norms of American medicine are speciously like those of traditional Korean culture, but the differences place Korean-American students at a disadvantage. When I began my third year of medical school, a…