Bedside Stories: The Transformation of the Hospital Patient Chart and the Grounding of Modern Medicine

Join us for the 4th Annual James R. Wright, Jr. MD, PhD Lecture featuring:

John Harley Warner, PhD
Avalon Professor in the History of Medicine,
Professor of American Studies and of History,
Chair, History of Medicine, Yale University

Hybrid (virtual and in-person) lecture

April 4, 4:30 - 6 p.m. EDT

Warner's lecture is titled, “Bedside Stories: The Transformation of the Hospital Patient Chart and the Grounding of Modern Medicine.”

Between the early nineteenth and the start of the twentieth centuries, the hospital patient record was entirely transformed. Drawing on surviving manuscript patient charts and focusing on patient records from the United States, Warner discusses how patient records, previously rich in human context, have been supplanted by a record style that is more of a clinical narrative full of quantification, impersonality and standardization. Warner closes by looking at how this approach to patient records has all but eliminated “the personal equation” of doctor and patient, reshaping clinicians’ conceptions of both patients and themselves – with lasting biomedical and human consequences. 

The event is free and open to the public. Please sign up to attend in person or online below.

In-person RSVP: go.osu.edu/Wright2024

Zoom registration: go.osu.edu/WrightZoom2024