Ep19: Dr. Luna Dolezal on shame in medicine

Have you ever been a patient? Do you remember any feelings of embarrassment or vulnerability? If you are a doctor, does it make sense to you that patients may feel shame? I started recently thinking about shame in medicine; this episode serves as an introduction to the topic. Professor Luna Dolezal, PhD, is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on three inter-related themes: (1) shame and self-conscious emotions; (2) embodiment and self-other relations; and (3) emerging medical and body-based technologies. Luna is currently the PI of the Shame and Medicine Project, an interdisciplinary research project investigating the role of shame in health and medicine. She is also the PI of the Scenes of Shame and Stigma in COVID-19 Project. She is author of the book The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism and the Socially Shaped Body (Lexington Books 2015), and the co-author of the book COVID-19 and Shame: Political Emotions and Public Health in the UK (Bloomsbury Academic 2023), which is available for pre-order. Her article, written with Dr Barry Lyons, Health-Related Shame: An Affective Determinant of Health.