Towards a Humanistic Medical Education: can South American medical semiology help?

Background: A systematic review on the topic of medical semiology was conducted with Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and English literature. Medical semiology as taught in South American medical schools teaches doctors to identify symptoms in patients, link them to known conditions and treatment pathways i.e. clinical sign recognition. This subject is based on the use of semiotic logic rather than a biomedical model of clinical education. Such subjects are no longer formally taught in UK medical education. However, in the last 30-years, medical schools in the Western world have witnessed the re-emergence of medical humanities subjects in their curricula, but not semiotics. This study analyses texts selected via systematic review, to understand how medical semiology might facilitate the re-introduction of semiotics into UK medical education, where is it is currently absent. Methods used: A systematic review of literature related to medical semiology was conducted, identifying literature in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and English. This literature was qualitatively synthesized and tabulated to generate common themes and characteristics. Results: The systematic review identified 765 available papers on the subject of medical semiology. One hundred and eighty-nine further works were identified but could not be accessed due to the financial restrictions of purchasing papers. Conclusions: Very few papers alluded to the connection between semiology and semiotics in a non-clinical form. The majority of the research about medical semiology is in relation to epilepsy, and the identification of common patterns in different types of seizures. This involved combinations of graphical electroencephalography data, and known patterns of seizure semiology i.e. different types of bodily movement. Despite many years of research, using the visual semiology data of observable patterns to correctly categorising seizure types can be just as effective as using neurological scans in the form of electroencephalography charts. A minority of research papers linked semiology to semiotics as a wider subject. They suggested the role sign recognition could play is to standardise approaches to clinical semiology within disease categories. In addition, to explore which semiological markers are of most diagnostic value, and what might be similar about them. Increasing the predictive validity of the semiology. One paper concluded that neuroethology has great potential to be applied in the study of human epilepsy semiology. In sum, if semiotics can contribute to the subject of medical semiology it could be through the semiotic analysis of anthropological data from persons with neurological conditions.
País: 
Reino Unido
Temas y ejes de trabajo: 
Los pasajes entre semiología y semiótica
Semiótica y ciencias biológicas
Institución: 
South West Peninsula Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (PenCLAHRC)
Mail: 
john.tredinnick-rowe@plymouth.ac.uk

Estado del abstract

Estado del abstract: 
Accepted
Desarrollado por gcoop.