Primary care through an anthropologist’s lens

Dr. Scott Stonington is a medical and cultural anthropologist, and an internist. He studies decision-making at the end of life in Thailand and spent many years accompanying Thai patients at the end of life and in particular trying to understand pain, suffering, and the role of pain medications from these patient’s points of view. Dr. Stonington also studies medical epistemology in the U.S., specifically looking at how health practitioners decide what constitutes true and/or useful knowledge and how this affects patients.