abstract:

Given the boundless amount of scientific information, clinical skills, and interventional techniques present in biomedicine today, it is impossible for individual physicians and clinicians to have absolute medical knowledge. Further, ambiguity in the interpretation and treatment of illness can lead to significant uncertainty. Despite the inevitability of not knowing in biomedicine, however, there is relatively little academic discussion about how physicians are socialized to address ignorance, how clinicians experience gaps in knowledge as practitioners, or the various forms that not knowing takes in professional health-care practice and education. This article seeks to invigorate new discussions on the role of ignorance and “non-knowledge” in biomedical practice and training. The article critically examines the predominant focus on medical knowledge in the sociological literature and presents a new anthropological framework for the relationship between knowing and not knowing in medicine, called “sufficient knowledge.” The author posits that future social and humanistic examinations of biomedicine should seriously consider the ways that physicians navigate ignorance, uncertainty, and not knowing, and that scientists, clinicians, social scientists, and ethicists all have valuable disciplinary perspectives to bring to the conversation around medical ignorance.

摘要：

鉴于当今生物医学中存在着无数的科学信息，临床技能和介入技术，个体医生和临床医生不可能拥有绝对的医学知识。此外，对疾病的解释和治疗的含糊不清会导致明显的不确定性。尽管不可避免地不了解生物医学，但是，关于如何使医师社交化以解决无知，临床医生如何体验从业者知识方面的空白，或者不知道在专业卫生保健实践中所采取的各种形式的学术讨论相对较少。教育。本文旨在激发有关无知和“不了解”在生物医学实践和培训中的作用的新讨论。该文章批判性地研究了社会学文献中对医学知识的主要关注，并提出了一种新的人类学框架，以了解医学上的了解与不了解之间的关系，称为“足够的知识”。作者认为，未来的生物医学社会和人文检查应认真考虑医师应对无知，不确定性和不了解的方式，并且科学家，临床医生，社会科学家和伦理学家都具有宝贵的学科观点，可以带动围绕医学的对话无知。