California State University, East Bay, Oakland, CA, USA.
Johns Hopkins University, Berman Institute of Bioethics, Baltimore, MD, USA.
J Med Humanit. 2021 Mar;42(1):103-107. doi: 10.1007/s10912-020-09676-w. Epub 2021 Mar 8.
We have never been so aware of masks. They were in short supply in the early days of COVID-19, resulting in significant risk to health care workers. Now they are highly politicized with battles about mask-wearing protocols breaking out in public. Although masks have obtained a new urgency and ubiquity in the context of COVID-19, people have thought about both the literal and metaphorical role of masks in medicine for generations. In this paper, we discuss three such metaphors-the masks of objectivity, of infallibility, and of benevolence-and their powerful role in medicine. These masks can be viewed as inflexible barriers to communication, contributing to the traditional authoritarian relationship between doctor and patient and concealing the authenticity and vulnerability of physicians. COVID masks, by contrast, offer a more nuanced and morally complex metaphor for thinking about protecting people from harm, authentic and trustworthy communication, and attention to potential inequities both in and beyond medical settings. We highlight the morally relevant challenges and opportunities that masks evoke and suggest that there is much to be gained from rethinking the mask metaphor in medicine.
我们从未像现在这样关注口罩。在 COVID-19 早期，口罩严重短缺，这对医护人员的健康造成了重大风险。现在，口罩已经高度政治化，关于戴口罩协议的争论在公共场合爆发。尽管在 COVID-19 背景下，口罩已经获得了新的紧迫性和普遍性，但人们已经思考了口罩在医学中的字面和隐喻意义。在本文中，我们讨论了三个这样的隐喻——客观性的面具、不可错性的面具和仁慈的面具——以及它们在医学中的强大作用。这些面具可以被视为沟通的僵化障碍，导致医生和患者之间的传统权威关系，并掩盖医生的真实性和脆弱性。相比之下，COVID 口罩为思考保护人们免受伤害、真实和值得信赖的沟通以及关注医疗环境内外潜在的不平等提供了一个更微妙和道德上更复杂的隐喻。我们强调了口罩所引发的道德相关挑战和机遇，并认为重新思考医学中的口罩隐喻有很多好处。
