HE 4902 - Professional Practice and the World of Medicine

(crosslisted) ANTHR 4902
(CU-CEL, CU-SBY, CU-UGR)

Fall, spring. 5 credits. Letter grades only.

Prerequisite: acceptance to New York City Urban Semester required. Offered in New York City.

S. Beck.

By implementing ethnographic methods students in the Urban Semester Program surface medical culture in their rotations and presence in hospital environments. These methods include historical analysis, oral history, participant observation, participatory methods, formal and informal interviews, and additional mechanisms to generate data. The focus of their exploration is based on disparities in health and medicine. By the end of the semester, students investigate the nature of medical professional practice by carrying out library research, observations, and informal interviews with medical practitioners in both New York Presbyterian and Woodhull hospitals. In this course students extend their capacity for self-direction and produce their own ethnography of medical practice. This may be an examination of medical culture, or the culture of a particular specialization, or an exploration of a particular topic in social medicine or public health.