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What are you Teaching in Spring 2023? with AMCS Lecturer Dr. John S. Schneider

L98 359 Topics in American Culture Studies: American Medicine: Culture, Communication, and Cognition

The course takes a different approach to looking at healthcare through the lens of the various relationships that occur in the pursuit of patients' better health.  Throughout all of health care, decisions are made with incomplete data and uncertainty.  Patients and physicians communicate around that uncertainty to choose what is best for the patients.  Those choices are informed by data, but many times those choices are influenced by culture, past experience, and bias.  Those choices also occur in the constraints of the organizations and policies around which healthcare is structured.  Ultimately, however, the decisions occur in our cognitive space, a space that is wrought with potential biases.  We're excited to explore how culture, cognition, and communication intersect in the lives of patients, physicians, nurses and other stakeholders in healthcare to examine and redefine what good decisions can be. 

I'm very excited to have so many experts come for a conversation about the various challenges of health care through this lens.  We have experts in medical education, end of life care, healthcare organization, public health, DEI, and more.  The format is like a podcast conversation, with student involvement in the conversation to really learn and challenge ourselves with these ideas.

John S. Schneider MD, MA is the Division Director and Associate Professor of Rhinology and Anterior Skull Base Surgery in the Department of Otolaryngology at Washington University School of Medicine.  He has a master's degree in Public Policy along with a background in the social sciences that has fueled his interest in cognitive bias and communication in health care.  He's lectured extensively on these topics regionally and nationally.  He has a busy clinical practice as well treating the most complex sinus and skull base conditions.