PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Megan Winkelman
AU  - Jacqueline Ng
AU  - Audrey Shafer
TI  - Charting Phelan's ‘To Suffer a Sea Change’
AID  - 10.1136/medhum-2015-010669
DP  - 2015 Dec 01
TA  - Medical Humanities
PG  - 121--127
VI  - 41
IP  - 2
4099  - http://mh.bmj.com/content/41/2/121.short
4100  - http://mh.bmj.com/content/41/2/121.full
SO  - J Med Humanit2015 Dec 01; 41
AB  - Physicians and healthcare workers usually perceive their medical record entries as documentation rather than construction. In the following article, we extract a medical record from a narrative, Peggy Phelan's pathography of glaucoma, ‘To Suffer a Sea Change’. From information about encounters described by Phelan, an ophthalmologist reconstructs progress notes similar to those that would be key to a glaucoma patient's medical record. Rather than condemning the arcane pointilism of the medical record as a poverty of language, or isolating the pathography as an academic text, we hope to instead appreciate what their collaborative dialogue offers the study of disease. While the points of divergence between these texts will demonstrate failures in communication, they will also unearth an enriched dialogue.