Building on Bibliography: Toward Useful Categorization of Research in Rhetorics of Health and Medicine

Abstract

This article reports on an analysis of research questions in the emerging field of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM). The data set included 54 articles, published in 4 journals between the years 2000 and 2014. The articles were found to address five areas, including questions about (a) the identity of RHM, (b) disciplinarity, (c) ecological interaction, (d) maneuverability, and (e) process. Overall, this article argues that RHM tends to take a critical stance toward medicine, treating it as a monolithic profession and set of discourses. Given the conclusions of many of the articles in the data set, this stance may be unwarranted. The article concludes by suggesting future directions for scholarship in RHM.

The Rhetoric of Health and Medicine as a “Teaching Subject”: Lessons from the Medical Humanities and Simulation Pedagogy

“…In her review of scholarship on RHM, Reed (2016) argues that most RHM articles take a critical stance towards medicine as a discipline, often portraying it as "a powerful, productive site of ideological construction" (17). This critical orientation, steeped in theoretical frameworks that help identify and describe how power circulates among individuals, is indeed part of what rhetoricians offer to health educational contexts.…”

“…In her 2016 review of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) scholarship, Reed (2016) argues that rhetoricians' critical orientation towards institutions of medicine has led to a lack of attention to medical professionals' "rhetorical disabilities" and limited pedagogical interventions (p. 19). In contrast, the Medical Humanities (MH) have successfully promoted curriculum to address medicine's limitations, positioning themselves as a humanizing force within coursework that they claim can desensitize its students.…”

Trust-Building in a Patient Forum: The Interplay of Professional and Personal Expertise

“…To illuminate some of the nuance that Reed (2016) calls for, this study examines the interplay of professional (medical) expertise and personal (experiential) expertise in a public discussion forum for Parkinson’s patients—the WebMD Parkinson’s Community—addressing the question, “How do professional and personal expertise work together to build trust in a patient forum?” This forum is particularly interesting because of the presence of a physician moderator. This study shows how both professional and personal expertise can coexist or complement each other to form trust, an essential ingredient in a community where patients need accurate information but also empathy.…”

“…Meanwhile, more humanistic fields such as RHM have tended to take a critical stance toward the medical establishment. As Reed (2016) notes, ''the privileging of medical expertise over other forms of knowledge and experiences with health and physicality is unsettling to rhetoric scholars who trace the means by which medical expertise comes to be seen as authoritative' ' (p. 18). She continues, ''Such a stance may limit the scope of our analysis and prevent us from fully accounting for the ways that medical rhetoric is always interactional and symbiotic' ' (p. 20).…”

Collaborative Paths and Contexts: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Rhetoric of Medical and Health Policy

“…The subdiscipline of the rhetorics of health and medicine (RHM), then, follows questions about language use as it relates to medical spaces, health practices, and related decision making. RHM is most succinctly defined by Amy Reed, who describes it as work that “examines language about health and medicine as produced by rhetors with limited agency; used by particular audiences, who may or may not share the intentions, values, beliefs, or practices of the rhetor; and reflecting and constituting ideology” (Reed, , p. 191).…”