Known as ‘ableism’ among the people with disabilities

Of descriptions and prescriptions: it is often quite awful - when doing medical interpreting - to see people being looked down on when unsuccessfully forced into stereotyped descriptions of pain or insisting on pain experienced despite meds having been given

Did you sense any of you own assumptions becoming “unsettled” in this talk?Are there other frames by which we can explore and interpret these topics more effectively?How do we best disseminate this kind of witnessing to those working in clinical spaces treating pain?

Thanks for posting those questions! Great talk!

Great comments Michael!

It's interesting, when we talk about observing medical encounters, that our medical interpreters are the ones in the middle that likely have the broadest and deepest view of what occurs in the clinician client/patient relationship. They are under-professionalized by the system, and almost never treated as full members of the medical care team.

Although the Pain Scale as a vital sign is still deeply embedded in the system, we should be aware (at least I believe) that its ascendency is directly related to the marketing form Perdue Pharma and other interested parties.

Any comments on UK/US differences?

Agree with Michael that role of medical interpreters are really important — brokering, third position often provides crucial perspectives

Zoom appointments do bring you (me) into the kitchen to an interesting extent and often are more revealing than those in an exam room

Following up on Mary Jo’s comment, there’s some interesting anthropological work on food and the kitchen as place of care/caring practices. And it’s interesting to me, as I’ve done some work on the social and structural ‘determinants’ of health and wellbeing in the context of disability to consider how housing and infrastructures shape experiences of SCI, Particularly, the fact that some of these experiences were not only of vulnerability and medical frailty but also of strength and capacity to deal with radical change and pandemic living, like one participant mentioned. Fascinating talk! Thanks.

living with can be expanded to researching with, rather than co-creating rathe

rather than ‘about’; as well as co-creation of story in writing.

got to jump to another meeting. thank you for inviting me. this is so much fun!

On M Nathan’s point re covid and Mary Jo’s re bringing the clinic to the kitchen, some therapists have reflected that doing therapy with clients from home, virtually, has changed the work in often productive ways based on patient goals (lower activation energy in seeking help, comfort and safety of own environment). Virtual mental health work pros/ cons seems an area to explore full of rich complexity.

I wonder if later in the trajectory massage and other body work might have similar narrativity to PT/OT

Great comment Angela, thank you!

Byron, that very often happens between interpreters and the patients they are interpreting for

Oh, and Mara Bunchbinder’s work on pediatric pain and the use of metaphor in the pain clinic. That might be a good resource as well for your project.

Love Mara's work!