Friday November 9, 2018
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Dampeer Room
Kelvin Smith Library*
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues:
The health policy and medical journals promote a vision of “autonomous” patients who learn about options on the internet, expect “shared decision-making,” and perhaps even demand excessive services. But do patients really want such a world?
Many patients might prefer to trust a doctor whom they know and who knows them. They may not be so comfortable with self-diagnosis off the internet, or advocating for their own health concerns. They may want a doctor to advocate for them. But can patients choose such care?
These questions are especially important for elderly persons with multiple chronic conditions. As Eva and Boaz Kahana have shown in recent research, their satisfaction with their care is strongly related to perceptions of good communication with their doctors. They want to trust and rely on doctors. “The empowerment paradigm calling for greater patients’ advocacy…(is not) consistent with the understandings and desires of the current cohort of elderly patients.”
Yet in our current medical economy with its giant organizations and pressures to process patients quickly, it may not be safe to assume that physicians will advocate for their patients. So the vision of autonomy may be wrong because patients don’t want it – but the system may not allow trust, either. Join us as Professor Kahana discusses her research and its implications.
All best regards,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Eva Kahana teaches courses in Stress, Health and Coping, Sociology of Institutional Care, and Sociology of Mental Illness. She has been engaged in a program of research related to understanding how older adults cope with a broad spectrum of stressors ranging from increasing frailty to relocation, institutionalization and surviving trauma in their lives. She has worked on a series of NIA funded studies focusing on proactive adaptations undertaken by older adults as they face stressful life situations. Based on these studies she has delineated models of successful aging.
Her recent work has also focused on health care of older adults and the health care relationships forged between patients, physicians and family caregivers. Eva Kahana directs the Elderly Care Research Center and enjoys both mentoring of students in research and developing innovative models relevant to aging and medical sociology. She also serves as director of the Gerontological Studies minor and co-major.
Professor Kahana’s research has been extensively funded by the National Institute on Aging, National Cancer Institute, and other funding bodies for nearly five decades. As Principal Investigator of her projects and a senior member of the Sociology faculty she has mentored many scholars. Professor Kahana’s further contributions to CWRU include holding secondary appointments in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, School of Medicine, and Frances Payne Bolton of Nursing. She served as Chair of the Department of Sociology for two decades and has been awarded the Hovorka Prize for exceptional achievement among our faculty.
Where We Meet
The Friday Public Affairs Lunch convenes each Friday when classes are in session, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Our programs are open to all and no registration is required. We usually meet in the Dampeer Room of Kelvin Smith Library.
* Kelvin Smith Library requires all entrants to show identification when entering the building, unless they have a university i.d. that they can magnetically scan. We are sorry if that seems like a hassle, but it has been Library policy for a while in response to security concerns. Please do not complain to the library staff at the entrance, who are just doing their jobs.
Parking Possibilities
The most convenient parking is the lot underneath Severance Hall. We regret that it is not free. From that lot there is an elevator up to street level (labeled as for the Thwing Center); it is less than 50 yards from that exit to the library entrance. You can get from the Severance garage to the library without going outside. Near the entry gates – just to the right if you were driving out – there is a door into a corridor. Walk down the corridor and there will be another door. Beyond that door you’ll find the entrance to an elevator which goes up to an entrance right inside the doors to Kelvin Smith Library.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
November 16: Questions and Answers About Recycling Plastics. With John Blackwell, Leonard Case Jr. Professor Emeritus, Macromolecular Science and Engineering Alternate Location: Room LL06A-C, Lower Level, Kelvin Smith Library.
November 23: Thanksgiving break.
November 30: Just How Powerful is Putin? With Stephen Crowley, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Oberlin College.
December 7: Union Decline in a Populist Era: The Experience of Western Democracies. With Chris Howell, James Monroe Professor of Politics, Oberlin College. |
