Phenomenology and its application in medicine.
Theoretical medicine and bioethics February 1, 2011 Havi Carel
Phenomenology, a method for describing and ordering first-person experience, can be applied to the experience of illness to help health care providers better understand it, yet this approach remains underused in the philosophy of medicine and medical training. This paper demonstrates phenomenology's usefulness for clinical medicine by presenting a method centered on the body and perception, drawing on Merleau-Ponty's concepts: the distinction between the biological body and the lived body, the habitual body, motor intentionality, and the intentional arc. Applications include narrowing gaps between objective assessments and subjective experiences of illness, fostering more attuned physician-patient dialogue, developing phenomenologically informed research methods, and giving medical staff a concrete understanding of illness's impact on patients' life-world.