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Year 1

Person, Culture and Medicine, 2008
Disciplines of Psychiatry and Anatomical Sciences
University of Adelaide

Summary

In 2008 PCM will be offered in Semester 1 only.  It replaces PCM 1A and 1B, and thus these courses are restrictions for PCM 1.  There are no prerequisites for this course.  PCM 1 is an interdisciplinary course that combines theoretical perspectives from psychology, physical anthropology and cultural anthropology, and applies these to the complex human processes of eating, intimate relationships, pain and death and dying.  The course requires attendance at two-hour seminar/tutorial blocks.  Assessment will be by way of one essay, , a reflective journal a student presentation, and student participation and attendance.  Formative assessment will be provided to students for summative tasks.  

PCM considers the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of psychology, cultural anthropology and biological (or physical) anthropology and related disciplines (such as neurobiology), and thus encourages a critical perspective when drawing upon the knowledge generated from psychological and anthropological research.

Course aims and objectives

The primary aim of this course is to foster an appreciation that complex human functions and behaviours pertinent to Medicine and the wider Health Professions are best understood through the integration of cross-disciplinary knowledge and methodologies from psychology and physical and social anthropology.  Furthermore, the course aims:

• To provide a broad understanding of psychology, cultural anthropology and physical anthropology.
• To appreciate that anthropology and psychology can be complementary disciplines, and see that they often intersect.
• To develop an understanding of contemporary views of culture and its role in mediating human interaction.
• To gain an appreciation of the evolutionary origin of human biological variation.
• To engender an appreciation of the evolutionary origins and cultural determinants of major human experiences.
• To encourage an understanding of the complexity of and variation in human responses to major life events.
• To apply these principles in developing an understanding of contemporary human social formations.

Further aims of the course are to provide an interdisciplinary learning environment that includes students from medicine, psychology, and the health sciences, with an emphasis on open discussion that generates critical thought, and fosters a sense of enjoyment in learning.

Teaching Staff

• Associate Professor Anna Chur-Hansen, who is the course co-ordinator, from the Discipline of Psychiatry.  She will teach the psychological components of the course.
• Dr Kirrilly Thompson, who is a cultural anthropologist and Visiting Research Fellow in the discipline of Anthropology.
• Professor Maciej Henneberg, from the Discipline of Anatomical Sciences, who teaches physical anthropology.
• Mel Baak, who completed PCM in 2000, its inaugural year, will deliver a guest session.

For most queries you should speak with Associate Professor Anna Chur-Hansen in the first instance.  She can be contacted on 8222 5785 (work), 8272 3743 (home) or by e-mail at anna.churhansen@adelaide.edu.au

Timetable

Mondays from 10am to 1pm over Semester 1.  The course will take place in Lect Th 1:22, Level 1, and Lect Th 2:51, Level 2 of the Eleanor Harrald Building at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Assessment

• Will be by way of an essay, a reflective journal, a presentation and tutorial attendance
• Will include formative and summative assessment
• Students will be required to write a referenced essay, contributing 50% to the overall grade
• The essay will be up to 2,000 words in length, and require an interdisciplinary approach
• The reflective portfolio will contribute 25% of the overall grade
• The presentation will contribute 25% of the overall grade
• Due dates for assignments are as follows: 
•         Essay:             Friday June 6th,  by 5pm
•         Portfolio:         Part 1,  Monday 28th April,  by 5pm
•         Portfolio:         Part 2,  Friday June 6th,  by 5pm
•         Presentation:  Referenced summary, Friday June 6th  by 5pm 
• Essay Topic:  "Describe and discuss ways in which knowledge from psychology, cultural anthropology and biological anthropology can be applied to clinical health care".
• Presentation topic:  Please decide upon one discipline (psychology, cultural anthropology, biological anthropology), and one area of clinical practice related to food and eating, sex and relationships, pain or death.  You MUST receive approval for your presentation topic AT LEAST ONE WEEK PRIOR to the presentation.  Students who do not have approval for the presentation will be deemed to have failed the requirements of the course.
• In addition to the presentation itself, a summary of it, of no more than 600 words and no less thant 300 words, must be submitted by the end of the course.  This summary must include at least 6 references and no more than 10 references.

 Other details

• All assignments are to be submitted to the Discipline Secretary of the Department of Psychiatry, Eleanor Harrald Building, Level 4.
• Students will be expected to attend all seminars and tutorials.  Attendance will be taken for tutorials.  A medical certificate will be required for non-attendance.  After missing more than two tutorials without a medical certificate, the student will be deemed to have failed the requirements of the course.
• Late work will be penalised at the rate of 5% per day, where a medical certificate or certification from a counsellor is not produced.
• To pass the course, students must achieve a minimum standard of 50% in all of the assignments.  Formative feedback should be sought from Dr Chur-Hansen at least once prior to submission of work for assessment.  Formative feedback can be given more than once if you wish, and indeed, this is encouraged. 

The Rob Barrett Memorial Prize

 
The student with the most outstanding results across PCM will be awarded this prize, which is given in honour of Professor Robert Barrett, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, who conceived PCM and was a teacher in it.

Introductory Readings

The following texts are not compulsory reading.  However, if students wish to gain a preliminary grounding in the three disciplines represented in the course, the following are recommended.

Psychology:  Any recent introductory text in psychology is suitable.  There are a number of such texts in multiple copies, in the Barr Smith Library.

Social anthropology:  
Barrett, R.A. (1991) Culture and Conduct: an excursion in anthropology. Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont.
Haviland, W. (1999) Cultural anthropology.  Harcourt, Fort Worth.
Hendry, J.  (1999)  An introduction to social anthropology: Other people’s worlds.  Macmillan Press, Houndsmills.
Taylor, R. (1992) Metaphysics. Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

Physical anthropology:         
Jurmain, R., Nelson, H., Kilgrove, L. & Trevathon, W. (2004) Essentials of Physical anthropology.  Wadsworth, California.
Relethford, JH (2001) The Human Species: An Introduction to Biological Anthropology.  (Fourth edition), Mayfield, California.

Reserve Readings

A number of texts have been placed in the Reserve Collection of the Barr Smith Library to help you in the writing of your essays.  These are to be used in conjunction with references that you find on your own.

To find the references placed on Reserve, check the Barr Smith Library catalogue. 

Sources to search for literature

• The first place to look for references is the Barr Smith Library catalogue.
• In particular, use the electronic data bases.  This is essential and expected from tertiary level students.  In particular you should use:
• Psycinfo
• PubMed
• Sociofile
• Anthropology Plus
• Current contents
• Cinahl
• Sociological abstracts
• The Annual Review of Anthropology is online and is useful for cultural and physical anthropology.
• The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, an electronic reference
• Ask the lecturers to help you find references.  In the first instance ask me (Anna), I can refer you to appropriate people or places.
• Maureen Bell, Psychiatry Librarian in the Barr Smith Library, is willing to help you locate references.  However, she should be your last port of call, not your first.
• Use your own initiative.  Assessors in these courses will be impressed by students who have made efforts to go the extra distance and visit other libraries, make contact with other experts in the field in question etc.

Other details regarding the essays

• Word limits must be adhered to.
• Use Times 12 font and double spacing.  This means there will be roughly 300 words per page.  Thus, a PCM essay will have approximately 7 pages of text
• No fancy fonts etc should be used on title pages.
• Handwritten essays will not be accepted.
• Essays that are late, without medical certification, will be penalised at 5% per day.

Referencing

• Essays must be referenced.
• This means that whenever you use a source to contribute to your essay, you must indicate it.
• Sources include books, journal articles, magazines, newspapers, lectures, tutorials and personal communications (discussions or letters where someone else gave you the idea).
• Where you do not reference your work, it may be considered plagiarism.
• Plagiarism includes writing material (from a sentence to a paragraph) from sources “word-for-word”.  If you take another’s idea, theory, data or opinion and present it in your own words, as if it were your own thought, and do not acknowledge your original source, this is also considered plagiarism.
• Plagiarism also includes copying from other students’ work, either a past or current students’ work. (Please be aware that I photocopy all essays for my records).
• The university takes a very serious view of plagiarism: at the very least the essay will be graded as “fail”.  However, consequences can be far more serious, including dismissal from the course.
• PCM and ECM use the Harvard (Author, date) system of referencing.
• Footnotes are not used in PCM or ECM.
• Bibliographies are not used in PCM or ECM.  A bibliography is a list of everything you have consulted for the essay, regardless of whether you used it in the writing up.

Harvard referencing: the reference list

• The reference list should include all references used in the text of the essay.  If the reference was not used in the essay, it does not appear in the reference list.
• The reference list is attached at the end of the essay.
• The references are listed in alphabetical order by authors’ surnames.
• Only primary references are listed (see below).
• If a book, the author(s) name goes first, then the date of publication, then the title (underlined), then the place of publication, then the publisher.  Eg: Johnson, T.M. & Sargent, C.F. (Eds) (1990) Medical Anthropology. Contemporary Theory and Method.  Praeger Publishers, New York.
• If an article, the author(s) name goes first, then the date of publication, then the title of the article, then the name of the journal (in italics), then the volume number (in bold) and finally the page numbers of the article.  Eg. Bolman, W.M.  (1995) The place of behavioural science in medical education and practice.  Academic Medicine, 70, 873-878.
• If a lecture or tutorial, give the lecturer’s name, the date of the session, the topic of the session and the course, the department and the institution.  Eg Chur-Hansen, A. (5/3/2002) Lecture, Introduction to psychological science. Person, Culture and Medicine.  Departments of Psychiatry and Anatomical Sciences, University of Adelaide.

Harvard referencing: the body of the essay

• Author(s)’ surname(s) and date of publication are given when an idea is paraphrased.  Eg “Long (1999) argued that  ….” or “It has been argued (Long, 1999) …..”
• If direct quotes are used, then in addition to the name and date, the page numbers must be provided.  Eg Potter (1998) says that “a large proportion of 20th century clinical therapeutic practice was based on qualitative methods” (p 2) or “A large proportion of 20th century clinical therapeutic practice was based on qualitative methods” (Potter, 1998, p 2).
• If you have read about something written by the person who thought of it, that is a primary reference.  So, if you have read Freud’s original papers, they are primary sources.  Often though, we read accounts of original work – you are more likely in Years 1 and 2 to read descriptions of Freud’s ideas, rather than his own work.  These are called secondary references.  Secondary sources should be indicated thus:           Eg  Freud (1927, in Beackon, 2000).  Only the primary source is listed on the reference list - in this example, Beackon, 2000 would appear but not Freud, 1917. 
• If several sources say the same thing, they can all be listed alphabetically, separated by semicolons.  Eg This has been described by many authors (Jacquier, 1984; Kennedy, 1975; Koopowitz, 2001).

Other details regarding the portfolio

• Portfolios are reflective journals.  They are used quite extensively in medical and nursing education, but are less commonly found in other health professional education.  It is well recognised that professional development requires an ability to reflect.
• Research shows that portfolios do not always work well.  There are, however, conditions which increase the likelihood that portfolio writing will be beneficial to the student – that is, that it will help them learn and aid their development as a future health professional.  These conditions are (1) provision of formative feedback; (2) the provision of clear guidelines; (3) latitude for the student to write freely if they wish; (4) exposure to experiences worth writing about; and (5) the award of a pass or fail grade.  If you wish to read more about this see Driessen, E.W et al. (2005) Conditions for successful reflective use of portfolios in undergraduate medical education.  Medical Education, 39, 1230-1235.
• After each PCM class you might wish to remain behind to write some of your portfolio.  You are encouraged to write at other times than this, but there must be a minimum of 10 entries in the journal in order to achieve a satisfactory grade.
• The portfolio can be presented in any way you wish – written in an exercise book, typed onto sheets, as stapled separate sheets. 
• Each entry must be dated.
  • You can reflect upon PCM in any ways you feel are appropriate.  Typical entries may revolve around what you are learning, looking back upon it, thinking through plans for assessment tasks, considering where your knowledge is lacking, reflecting upon emotional reactions to material in the course, the ways in which you are being taught, how you feel about their learning experiences and so on.
  • You may also like to think through whether the course is achieving its stated aims and objectives, as listed on Page 1.  For example, have some of your ideas and beliefs been challenged?  How do you feel about it?  Do you think it is useful to learn alongside students from other disciplines or not?  Consider why you think so.
• In assessing portfolios, higher grades will be awarded to students who show an ability to reflect in an open and honest way that fosters insight into their learning.  Credit will be given for students who show development over the period of the portfolio.
• Some things are not appropriate for portfolios.  For example, personally insulting remarks about classmates or teachers, and sexist or racist reflections are inappropriate. 
• However, negative feelings, criticisms about the teaching or the course, disappointment about the experience and so on are acceptable and indeed, can be powerful in helping you to achieve an insight into yourself and how you deal with such things.  For example, think through why you feel unhappy, and what you might be able to do to constructively manage the issue.  If you are not sure how to word such reflections, Dr Chur-Hansen will help you with this during a formative feedback session.

Presentation assessment proforma

Name:                                                                         Date:

Topic:

Introduction

Introduced topic, stated objective

Gained attention of audience

Established climate of interest

Body of presentation

Presented 3-5 main points in a clear and organised fashion

Provided supporting materials, examples

Used visuals, handouts, demonstrations

Conclusion

Summarised key points without introducing new material

Provided closure

Stimulated further thought

Stimulated discussion

Presenter dynamics

Enthusiastic

Used appropriate voice, gestures, movements

Encouraged active participation from audience

Used questions to stimulate thought and discussion

Kept to time limit (10 minutes) with 5 minutes questions

Strengths                                Recommendations                                  Grade