Health professions education (HPE) is built on a structural foundation of modernity based on Eurocentric epistemologies. This foundation privileges certain forms of evidence and ways of knowing and is implicated in how dominant models of HPE curricula and healthcare practice position concepts of knowledge, equity, and social justice. This invited perspectives paper frames this contemporary HPE as the “Master’s House”, utilizing a term referenced from the writings of Audre Lorde. It examines the theoretical underpinnings of the “Master’s House” through the frame of Quijano’s concept of the Colonial Matrix of Power (employing examples of coloniality, race, and sex/gender). It concludes by exploring possibilities for how these Eurocentric structures may be dismantled, with reflection and discussion on the implications and opportunities of this work in praxis.

To educate physicians who are capable of delivering ethical, socially responsible, patient-centered care, there have been calls for identifying curricular space for reflection on the human and societal dimensions of medicine. These appeals, however, beg the question: What does it mean to devote space in an otherwise busy curriculum for these types of reflection? This Perspective is an attempt to understand the nature of this educational space in terms of its purpose, uses, dynamics, and limitations, and the underlying components that allow reflection and transformation to occur. Reflections on psychosocial themes often take the form of dialogues, which differ from the discussions commonly encountered in clinical settings because they require the engagement of the participants' whole selves--life experiences, backgrounds, personal values, beliefs, and perspectives--in the exchanges. Dialogues allow for the inclusion of affective and experiential dimensions in addition to intellectual/cognitive domains in learning, and for an emphasis on discovering new perspectives, insights, and questions instead of limiting participants solely to an instrumental search for solutions. Although these reflections may vary greatly in their form and settings, the reflective space requires three qualities: safety and confidentiality, an intentional designation of a time apart from the distractions of daily life for reflection and dialogue, and an awareness of the transitional nature--the liminality--of a critically important period of professional identity development. In this open space of reflection and dialogue, one's identity as a humanistic physician takes form.

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The COVID-19 pandemic is another challenge in South Africa's history, which is characterized by apartheid and its aftermath, the AIDS pandemic, and ongoing social and transgenerational trauma. South Africans have experienced serial collective trauma. The virus arrived here later than in the other parts of the world, offering possible respite to already burdened parallel health systems. The pandemic will exacerbate social and economic challenges and increase mental health risks. South African resilience will be tested again.

Purpose Household food insecurity in South Africa is a pervasive public health challenge. Although its link to chronic health conditions is well established, its relationship to mental illness, particularly major depression, is not well-understood. Despite KwaZulu-Natal Province being the epicenter of the drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) epidemic, and having the largest share of poverty in South Africa, this relationship remains unexamined. This study investigated the association between major depressive episode (MDE) and household food insecurity among individuals with MDR-TB. Methods We enrolled and interviewed 141 newly admitted microbiologically confirmed MDR-TB inpatients at a specialized TB hospital in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Logistic regression models were fitted to assess the relationship between MDE and household food insecurity, while accounting for socio-demographic status (e.g., age, gender, education, marital status, social grant status, income, and preference for living in one’s community). Results The prevalence of MDE and household food insecurity was 11.35% and 21.01%, respectively. MDE was significantly associated with household food insecurity (aOR 4.63, 95% CI 1.17–18.38). Individuals who are female (aOR 6.29, 95% CI 1.13–35.03), young (aOR 8.86, 95% CI 1.69–46.34), have low educational attainment (aOR 6.19, 95% CI 1.70–22.59) and receive social grants (aOR 7.60, 95% CI 2.36–24.48) were most at risk of household food insecurity. Conclusions MDE in individuals with MDR-TB was significantly associated with household food insecurity, independent of socio-economic status. Although MDR-TB is not exclusively a disease of the poor, individuals from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., female, young adults, low education, and social grant recipients) were more likely to experience household food insecurity. Our study underscores the need to address the co-occurring cycles of food insecurity and untreated MDE in South Africa.

Modern medicine is an artifact of colonialism because the science that underpins modern medicine emerged from Western knowledge structures based on a history of colonialism. The author suggests the colonial roots of Western-based modern medicine must be reexamined. While there are various critical theories that may be applied in this reexamination, most do not adequately account for intersectional, intergenerational, and sociohistorical inequities encountered in the multiplicity of global contexts in practice teaching and research within medicine. The

Scouring a bookshop in Havana, Cuba, I came across Olive Senior's poem Colonial Girls' School. 1 It teleported me to my mother's and aunts' musings about their colonial girls' schools.

Heightened clinicopathological awareness of the expanding anatomical distribution of myopericytoma is critical to its diagnosis when it presents in unusual and novel locations. Myopericytoma should be added to the range of external auditory canal neoplasms, especially those characterised by an admixture