Hey LessWrong: I stumbled across you after coming across references to rationalist and the Grey tribe on Twitter I think, along with the Post-Rats. Anyhow, you caught my curiosity and I’ve been “dabbling” around the edges to understand your “hypostatical basis” of the world while trying not to get too lost in the weeds. My background is as an AIDS/Oncology CNS before crashing out with health stuff. Part of my nursing background involved learning Heidegger from Bert Dreyfus and Kierkegaard from Jane Rubin as part of learning Phenomenological methodologies for clinical research. However, I ended up going down the rabbit hole with Levinas and Blanchot and then Derrida and ditching research for clinical practice. Oddly enough it took me into Medical QA/QM stuff.
Cutting to the chase, I’d read some Timothy Snyder stuff which piqued my phenomenological interests enough to decide I would attempt to re-read all those texts and see if I really understood any of it. To the end, I recently re-read Derrida’s The Gift and am working on starting to reread both T&I and OTB by Levinas along with Blanchot’s Infinite Conversation; followed by Derrida’s Dissemination with luck. Part of my curiosity was seeing how differently folks were defining simulacrum compared to my understanding and the differences. In a nutshell, I’ve understood a simulacrum as being like a genotype and its‘ phenotype as it’s dissimulation. That‘s pretty packed and there’s lots for me to sort out there...
I’ve been reading a few posts by Scott and sorting out what I’ve missed on AI; trying to make sense of Baye’s theory stuff and how it maps on Neuroscience stuff. In particular I just read his review on “Surfing Uncertainty” and was struck by the similarities between it and Levinasian notions of proximity, substitution, saying/said, etc. I don’t know how much I’ll have to contribute but saw the open/welcome thread and thought it probably best to introduce myself....hopkins (aka heideana)
Hi and apologies, I haven’t figured out how to be notified of a posting reply and just found this.
My experience was yes, using a phenomenology frame was very helpful getting clinical care folks focused on looking at QA/QM as something more than “busy work” getting in the way of doing important clinical work. For example, there was an issue with critically-ill homeless/immigrant patients in the public health system making f/u appts. after hospital discharge resulting in costly high readmission rates. The hospital service Attending/staff were directed to solve problem, met as a group & decided issue was patients simply didn’t know when/where their discharge appointments were and printing out better discharge appointment cards with explicit maps/directions & date/time of the f/u appointment was the answer. Problem solved, group dissolved, cards were promptly printed and given to discharge patients, end of story so they could get back to clinical care except that patients still didn’t show up and the readmission rate didn’t change.
As silly as it may seem, reframing the problem in terms of grounded theory/lived experience helped the medical staff realize they needed to actually interview/talk to patients to find out why they were missing discharge appointments instead of just assuming what the problem was. Of course the underlying issues varied pt. to pt. & could be generalized into basic themes like not having money for transportation, having disorganized cognitive follow-thru problems, not understanding language and importance of medical f/u, etc… I’m not sure if using phenomenological language gave medical staff permission to look deeper or better tools to examine the underlying issues or just slowed them down enough to think the problem through/outside of the box? The end result was we developed funding resources proposals for outreach discharge services w/patient advocates that saw/assessed critically-ill at risk patients before discharge to make specific plans to ensure they were seen in their specific Discharge Clinics, including accompanying them if needed. Success was measured by decreased early readmission rates, etc...which made folks feel good about the effort and the importance of doing good QA/QM.
Hey LessWrong: I stumbled across you after coming across references to rationalist and the Grey tribe on Twitter I think, along with the Post-Rats. Anyhow, you caught my curiosity and I’ve been “dabbling” around the edges to understand your “hypostatical basis” of the world while trying not to get too lost in the weeds. My background is as an AIDS/Oncology CNS before crashing out with health stuff. Part of my nursing background involved learning Heidegger from Bert Dreyfus and Kierkegaard from Jane Rubin as part of learning Phenomenological methodologies for clinical research. However, I ended up going down the rabbit hole with Levinas and Blanchot and then Derrida and ditching research for clinical practice. Oddly enough it took me into Medical QA/QM stuff.
Cutting to the chase, I’d read some Timothy Snyder stuff which piqued my phenomenological interests enough to decide I would attempt to re-read all those texts and see if I really understood any of it. To the end, I recently re-read Derrida’s The Gift and am working on starting to reread both T&I and OTB by Levinas along with Blanchot’s Infinite Conversation; followed by Derrida’s Dissemination with luck. Part of my curiosity was seeing how differently folks were defining simulacrum compared to my understanding and the differences. In a nutshell, I’ve understood a simulacrum as being like a genotype and its‘ phenotype as it’s dissimulation. That‘s pretty packed and there’s lots for me to sort out there...
I’ve been reading a few posts by Scott and sorting out what I’ve missed on AI; trying to make sense of Baye’s theory stuff and how it maps on Neuroscience stuff. In particular I just read his review on “Surfing Uncertainty” and was struck by the similarities between it and Levinasian notions of proximity, substitution, saying/said, etc. I don’t know how much I’ll have to contribute but saw the open/welcome thread and thought it probably best to introduce myself....hopkins (aka heideana)
Please excuse typos & autocorrect strangeness
I’d be curious whether you found any applications for phenomenological methodologies in the area of medical research/clinical practice.
Hi and apologies, I haven’t figured out how to be notified of a posting reply and just found this.
My experience was yes, using a phenomenology frame was very helpful getting clinical care folks focused on looking at QA/QM as something more than “busy work” getting in the way of doing important clinical work. For example, there was an issue with critically-ill homeless/immigrant patients in the public health system making f/u appts. after hospital discharge resulting in costly high readmission rates. The hospital service Attending/staff were directed to solve problem, met as a group & decided issue was patients simply didn’t know when/where their discharge appointments were and printing out better discharge appointment cards with explicit maps/directions & date/time of the f/u appointment was the answer. Problem solved, group dissolved, cards were promptly printed and given to discharge patients, end of story so they could get back to clinical care except that patients still didn’t show up and the readmission rate didn’t change.
As silly as it may seem, reframing the problem in terms of grounded theory/lived experience helped the medical staff realize they needed to actually interview/talk to patients to find out why they were missing discharge appointments instead of just assuming what the problem was. Of course the underlying issues varied pt. to pt. & could be generalized into basic themes like not having money for transportation, having disorganized cognitive follow-thru problems, not understanding language and importance of medical f/u, etc… I’m not sure if using phenomenological language gave medical staff permission to look deeper or better tools to examine the underlying issues or just slowed them down enough to think the problem through/outside of the box? The end result was we developed funding resources proposals for outreach discharge services w/patient advocates that saw/assessed critically-ill at risk patients before discharge to make specific plans to ensure they were seen in their specific Discharge Clinics, including accompanying them if needed. Success was measured by decreased early readmission rates, etc...which made folks feel good about the effort and the importance of doing good QA/QM.
Hope that’s a helpful exemplar?