title: From soma to psyche: the crucial connection. Part 2. 'Cross-cultural medicine' decoded: learning about 'us' in the act of learning about 'them'.
abstract: The scorpion's bite--a culturally inept response to a medical emergency. Margaret Clark's criteria--keys to cultural barriers in medical care. Clifford Geertz's injunction: to view the culturally "different" as mirrors of the unacknowledged self. The case of José--scandal of his "compartmentalized" treatment.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  How much context may a physician be willing to absorb? Shawcross's The Quality of Mercy: western medical teams in Cambodian refugee camps--their good intentions versus their ethnocentric gaffes. The elderly as avatars of a "culture within a culture." Their beliefs, fears, dreams, and intimations--a "terra incognita" for service providers. Sardonic recoil against them (as in Shem's novel House of God) by residents--a professionally sanctioned response, deflecting what might otherwise be unendurable demands on their varied quotas of pity. Sisela Bok's moral claims: (1) for the integrity of decision making among the sick; (2) for the autonomy of the "dying response" among the aged. Steinberg's The Ethnic Myth: indictment of those using cultural difference to "explain" (or rationalize) health--and other--deficits rooted in historic, social, or economic inequity.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Marcus
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marcus
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency; D010819:Physician's Role; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010821:Physicians, Family