Medicine and Place: An Inquiry

This essay explores the various places inhabited by doctors and patients, in order to lead doctors to a more complex understanding of their patients' experiences of illness. Using Adam Haslett's "The Good Doctor" (2002), we examine what happens when doctors enter the worlds of their patients, both the literal landscapes of their patients' homes and the hidden landscapes of their minds. We illustrate the impact place has on doctors' understanding of their patients and on the patients' attitudes toward their illness. In addition, we examine how place informs readers' perceptions of both the coherence and the divide between the worlds of doctor and patient.