Medicine

  • "Challenging today from the past" with material from the arts, history and science in Scotland

  • This article originally appeared on Septermber 1, 2015 in Comment,a publication of CARDUS: www.cardus.ca.

    For better or ill, my academic meanderings have brought me to a career where I spend the majority of my time building mathematical models to aid health-care managers in solving complex scheduling and capacityplanning problems. In other words, I try to convince health-care managers, on the strength of my word, to adopt often counterintuitive policies based on complex mathematical models they cannot hope to understand—and that doing so will provide better care for those who need it. Think of it as bringing Walmart's supply-chain sophistication to the world of health care. But what makes my work most difficult is not solving equations, or even explaining them. Rather, those I seek to convince are largely driven by a utilitarian ethic that uses mathematics to justify ends that, in my mind, contradict the proper goals of medicine.

"There is no quick recipe for Christian pedagogy, just a long process, worked out with fear and trembling, of taking off the old and putting on the new, and finding ways of speaking, acting, and shaping shared activity that resonate with the kingdom of God."

David I. Smith

 

 

 

We use cookies

We use cookies on our website. Some of them are essential for the operation of the site, while others help us to improve this site and the user experience (tracking cookies). You can decide for yourself whether you want to allow cookies or not. Please note that if you reject them, you may not be able to use all the functionalities of the site.