Miracles in medicine: A narrative inquiry exploring extraordinary events in pediatrics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Aims: Whether miracles are seen as a source of conflict between healthcare teams and families, a foolish or even harmful belief, or a hindrance to system-wide improvements and scientific inquiry, miracles within medicine have long been questioned. We were interested in the perspectives of pediatricians on miracles and how that has informed their care of patients. We also sought to explore the intersection and relationship between the medical sciences, faith, and how we view miracles. Methods: Using narrative inquiry as a research methodology, we had conversations and explored the experiences of physicians who work directly within pediatric clinical care. We used purposeful sampling by emailing several pediatricians whom we felt might have been interested in the project and may have had experiences with perceived medical miracles. All conversations were conducted over Zoom and recorded. Results: mostly as favorable and fortuitous events that invoked a sense of wonder due to contextual factors such as geography, access to resources, time in history but also previous experiences and the expectations of the clinician. Second, there is a complex dynamic within and between the medical sciences and the faith commitments of clinicians and families, especially when facing life-limiting or end-of-life illness. Conclusions: The stories that our participants told not only informed their past experiences and how they remembered them but also their present and future experiences. Exploring the topic of medical miracles allowed us to better understand the social discourses that shape our perceptions of miracles, death, and the role of the physician. These stories offer us hope and possibility in a time when we as a medical community may have lost our sense of wonder and the ability to notice miracles.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.030 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.014 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".