The Science
This photo shows a diverse group of university students rolling multifarious dice, thereby representing diversity and uncertainty. While many tertiary degrees (e.g. BSc and MBBS) emphasise set approaches and answers, the real world and wider universe are complex, individualised, and uncertain. Take medicine for example. Diverse medical workforces help provide varied clinical perspectives, greater empathy, and person-centred care. A patient’s probabilities of beneficial and adverse treatment responses depend on multifarious factors, including genetics. The prescribing physician must weigh up any known probabilities of benefits and risks while considering the patient’s characteristics, preferences, and values. Writing prescriptions is like rolling dice.
The Artist
Michael J. Leach (@m_jleach) is an Australian writer, artist, and academic based at Monash University School of Rural Health. He has published photos in Consilience and Pulse—Voices from the Heart of Medicine as well as poems in outlets such as Cordite Poetry Review and the Medical Journal of Australia. Michael won the inaugural Statistical Society of Australia Photography Competition (2018). His visual poetry has won the UniSA Mental Health and Wellbeing Poetry Competition (2015) and been commended in the Hippocrates Prize (2021). Michael’s debut poetry collection is Chronicity (Melbourne Poets Union, 2020). He lives on Dja Dja Wurrung Country.
Copyright statement. This work is published under the CC BY-NC-SA license