Like many people on this week of snow, I was wondering what the weather might be for my drive to work. I realized that I look at the Weather Network before I look out the window. When I was younger I could read the weather by checking the colour of the sky, by stepping outside and feeling the air and the temperature.
This is another way that our Digital Age directs us to take the virtual as the primary source of information about our world. We are seeing this more and more in the health environment where I work. All of us - doctors, nurses, social workers - we consult the digital record or chart, even when the warm human body is sitting next to us. We are becoming ambiguous about our relationships with digital information and the raw experience of the person in the room. Which is the primary reference, which is the real targte of our service?
from Akashaloka,
Ray Innen Parchelo
1 comments:
The digitizing of the medical context in itself seems less the problem than the comoditization of the patient and the corresponding dehumanizing objectification. If mindfulness in medicine can take its appropriate place in all this, it will be the corrective of this folly and science and technology can more fully become the servant of human dignity for which it is best suited.
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