Hidden Problems
Steve Lindley
I have attempted to demonstrate with the aid of an annotated photograph of a crowded tube station-people’s hypothetical conditions, whether minor or severe and their opinion of how “well” they feel as a percentage.
I have considered whether each person has presented symptoms to their doctor. I have also tried not to stereotype people.
Whole Person Care – Year One
I like how this takes an ordinary situation and people who we normally view as without a personality, and attaches stories to each individual. It makes you think…
This picture really brings home the point that health is a very personal thing. How we feel is completely unique to ourselves and cannot always be judged by an outside person. The fact that the picture is of an everday scene of people going about their normal daily lives just reminds me that health and illness go far beyond the doctor’s surgery or the hospital. Outside of these healthcare environments, they are normal people with normal lives, something that should be considered during diagnosis and treatment of disease. I will try to keep these thoughts in mind in my later career, a reminder to treat everyone as people not cases, and to think of how everyone is different in their responses and feelings to illness.
I found this piece really eye opening. It’s really interesting how differently everyone perceives their own health and well-being and really makes the point that, as a doctor or health care professional, you can never know how someone is feeling until you talk to them and ask them questions about how they feel. It amazes me that one person can feel 67% with a common cold and another 96% when fighting breast cancer. This piece is a good reminder of how you should treat each patient as a person and not as a disease.
As previously commented this picture reminds us each individual has their own perception of health and illness – but what influence has each person’s doctor had over this? Perhaps ‘fighting breast cancer’ is fairly happy because she has a GP who fully and sensitively explained her prognosis, allowing her to properly come to terms with her illness. The picture reminds us how much influence a physician can have over the real lives of his patients, and how careful we must be when exercising this power.
I think this is a really interesting and eye opening piece. It’s just such an amazing thing, if you take a minute to stop and think, that when you travel on a bus or train and you look around, there are all these people you don’t know and who you probably won’t see again, but all of them have their own stories, problems, families and friends. The poet Philip Larkin calls it a “frail travelling coincidence”, sharing this moment of unity with the other passengers but soon everyone will disperse and continue with their own lives. I think this picture really demonstrates that incredible fact and makes you put into perspective your own problems and appreciate the world outside your own life and, as a doctor, empathise more with the people whose paths you will cross.
I think this piece very effectively highlights how the variability between people’s perceptions of their own health can be striking; one person may manage to deal with a particular illness without too much disruption to their life, while the same illness may have a far greater impact on the life of another individual. It reminds us that healthcare professionals need to look at the patient and then the disease, rather than the other way round, and always consider the effect a disease will have for that particular individual.
This piece is interesting as it highlights the difference’s in perceptions of one’s own health, particularly as it highlights the impact that different conditions can have on daily life. This highlights the importance of doctors paying attention to the individual and their duty to look after their patient’s physical and mental health.
This piece is very interesting because on first glance it doesn’t appear medical, and this only becomes clear once the labels have been read. It highlights that on first glance of a person it can be difficult to tell if someone is well or not as many conditions are not visible. Also, it is a reminder that everyone views health differently and has their own standard of health: the man with severe atherosclerosis feels 83% well whereas someone else with the common cold only feels 67% well. Its setting in a tube station reminds that people with health conditions are still individuals with goals, careers, families and hobbies.
I thought this piece was very interesting as the use of the tube station really shows just how disease can affect anyone. It also shows how we as individuals have our own opinion sand thoughts on our own conditions and they may be different to others in the same position. It also illustrates how we as doctors have to deal with such a wide range of people and conditions.
This is an extremely powerful piece of work. The photographic composition, exposure, and greyscale of the photo really mesh well with the edited quotes and their meanings. As society becomes increasingly fast-paced and hectic, we often get so preoccupied with completing our daily routines and tasks that we sometimes miss the human element of the people walking by.
The photo beautifully captures the rush of life: The train speeding by in a blur, the passengers standing on the platform. They all seem distracted, somewhat lost in their thoughts. For them, this could be a routine that they can complete mindlessly, so they stop paying attention to the little things that happen, they stop living in that moment.
The quotes that have been edited are very interesting to me. It struck me that the conditions listed in those quotes have been put in quotation marks, almost as if they weren’t actually real. Some conditions were more serious, like “severe atherosclerosis” and “fighting breast cancer” while others weren’t, “pregnant!!!” and “I have nothing to complain about!”. To me, this represents how little we know about the people around us every day. A lot of people go through internal struggles without ever showing it, so there’s no way to tell what someone else is going through just from a look.
Most strikingly, was the demonstration of how integrated medical issues and concerns are into everyone’s lives. Many of the quotes involved concerns that might eventually resolve itself or get brushed off, such as “runny nose” or “tired and aching and stressed”. So in this case, it would never be brought to light. While other concerns are worth investigating with a medical practitioner, such as “found a lump last month” and “mild depression”. The artist stated that they tried not to stereotype people, but there are some conditions that struggle to stray from stereotypes, especially conditions that are closely linked to gender or age.
The artist causes us to appreciate the need for empathy, which has to be assumed because we don’t truly know anything about strangers in passing. As a medical practitioner, we also need to acknowledge the stressors of daily life for people that may play a role in their medical conditions.
This piece really successfully addresses how much health impacts our lives and that our outward appearance is not a good indicator of health when we are just going about our lives. I like the idea explored her about not judging or assuming what anyone is going through as we all have our own struggles and successes that are not obvious, but we just have to keep going. One of these people has breast cancer, yet they are still getting on this train on what looks like a morning commute in the piece, showing the resilience of people and also the relentlessness of life and how hard it is for us to look after ourselves and our health in thus busy, hustle-cultured filled world. I think there can be a lot of judgement or pieced judgement about what health is or looks like, for example with issues surrounding exercise, eating disorders and obesity, but this piece shows there is no one look of health which is a really important thing for all people to remember. Health issues can so often be a lonely, isolating struggle as people may not want help or to speak out about their issue for a whole variety of reasons, meaning we need to make access to healthcare as open and comfortable as possible.