Publication Date
5-2025
Document Type
Student Project
First Advisor
Bennett, Alexandra
Degree Name
B.S. (Bachelor of Science)
Department
Department of English
Abstract
Narrative medicine is a tool that the medical field is increasingly utilizing to cultivate patient-centered and culturally competent doctors and to reflect on lived experiences through texts that focus on psychosocial best practices. This study aims to examine the language used in physician-written works that address how physicians in different medical specialties treat the aging and the terminally ill, and how they view the deceased. Qualitative data guided by thematic questions will primarily be used in the analysis and comparison of these texts’ tone, rhetoric, diction, and similar literary devices to uncover if certain patterns arise across such specialties. Findings show that different specializations do exhibit different attitudes regarding death in correlation with their role in medicine, as shown by, fundamentally, what they constitute as death and the various ideas they associate with it. However, ambiguity in death as a motif arises from the texts through various qualifications made by each author. Further analysis of more texts will follow along with the study’s implications for the greater medical community.
Recommended Citation
Alkonga, Stephanie Anne C., "On Death and Disease: How Physicians’ Perspectives Compare Across Specialties Through Written Work" (2025). Honors Capstones. 1588.
https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/studentengagement-honorscapstones/1588
Included in
Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons, Cardiology Commons, Emergency Medicine Commons, Epidemiology Commons, Family Medicine Commons, Geriatrics Commons, Interprofessional Education Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Medical Humanities Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons
