Privilege in the medical academy

By approaching the training of our physicians from the enlightening perspective of medical humanities, Delese Wear shows us how the Western paradigm of "scientific objectivity" reinforces cultural biases based on gender, race, class, and sexual orientation. But when wise teachers use literature and art to decode the silences and scripts of traditional medical education, our doctors (who record and tell our stories to one another in our medical records) can learn to bring into their practices the healing values of imagination, empathy, and social justice.