Alex Broom’s podcast on suffering

Alex Broom and Ana Dragojlovic’s new book, Bodies and Suffering, which informed his seminar. The book examines the idea of the suffering body across different cultures and contexts and the experience and treatment of these suffering bodies.

Hi everyone,

As promised, here’s the podcast from Alex Broom’s seminar last week in which he talked about how we might think differently about human suffering.

One idea he challenged is  that suffering is only about patients; he raised questions about the suffering clinicians express (or don’t express)  when caring for them.  As a medical oncologist described it:

Ann: It’s exhausting um but … time heals. So you’ll feel it more emotionally acutely while it’s happening and it hurts, it physically hurts. Watching this man [who is dying] physically hurts me and my nurse. We’re in pain physically because of the emotional strain of watching a person suffer (Female, Medical oncologist)

Alex has also generously shared his PowerPoint presentation (not for reproduction without permission) from the seminar for your reference.
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