Upon reflection, I see the fairly disparate approaches of this course, the humanities side and the pharmacy side, as related in two primary ways. First, I think the humanities aspect helps to describe the pain the pharmacy facet aims to treat. The result of the description, which is less clinical than those in medicine, is increased empathy for people who feel pain and suffering. Second, the humanities perspective and pharmacy viewpoint work like something akin to a second opinion. They each describe pain and some ways to treat it, but they diverge in both areas like two doctors might when dealing with a medical problem. For the first interaction between these lenses, the humanities portion of this class helped to describe the pain the pharmacy
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In the 11th chapter on page 213 in the book from textbook services, Ivan is describing the mental pain he’s feeling as he’s dying. He scribes this “suffering in spirit” as “his greatest agony.” Tolstoy then describes how Ivan is wrestling with whether he lived a good life. Those are probably concepts you could discuss from a pharmacy perspective, talking about mental health and various drug treatments for mental illnesses, but we gain something by reading about it from the point of view of a character we’ve grown to know over approximately 50 pages. It helps give us a deeper understanding than a medical discussion, although that is undeniably still …show more content…
My experience with pharmacies is strictly on the community side of things. I’ve never encountered a pharmacist who works in a hospital or somewhere like that before, and therefore never considered people developing a relationship with their pharmacist. So the fact that empathy could be important as a pharmacist was a foreign idea to me, but it makes sense. A patient would want the pharmacist to acknowledge their pain and suffering, as that alone might make them feel better. I think materials like we read are one avenue for increasing that empathy. That is not limited to pharmacists, however, as one thing we’ve learned in this class is pain and suffering take many forms and everyone will experience some of them. I don’t plan to provide health care in anyway whatsoever, save maybe some first aid for a minor injury. Nevertheless, I think reading these texts has helped me develop a greater empathy for those I encounter who are going through painful times, either emotional or physical. That empathy could prove beneficial to those people I
In the 11th chapter on page 213 in the book from textbook services, Ivan is describing the mental pain he’s feeling as he’s dying. He scribes this “suffering in spirit” as “his greatest agony.” Tolstoy then describes how Ivan is wrestling with whether he lived a good life. Those are probably concepts you could discuss from a pharmacy perspective, talking about mental health and various drug treatments for mental illnesses, but we gain something by reading about it from the point of view of a character we’ve grown to know over approximately 50 pages. It helps give us a deeper understanding than a medical discussion, although that is undeniably still …show more content…
My experience with pharmacies is strictly on the community side of things. I’ve never encountered a pharmacist who works in a hospital or somewhere like that before, and therefore never considered people developing a relationship with their pharmacist. So the fact that empathy could be important as a pharmacist was a foreign idea to me, but it makes sense. A patient would want the pharmacist to acknowledge their pain and suffering, as that alone might make them feel better. I think materials like we read are one avenue for increasing that empathy. That is not limited to pharmacists, however, as one thing we’ve learned in this class is pain and suffering take many forms and everyone will experience some of them. I don’t plan to provide health care in anyway whatsoever, save maybe some first aid for a minor injury. Nevertheless, I think reading these texts has helped me develop a greater empathy for those I encounter who are going through painful times, either emotional or physical. That empathy could prove beneficial to those people I