An internist reflects on his short story as well as a fellow physician’s personal essay and explores the complex issue of crossing implicit social boundaries in the clinician-patient relationship.
Read moreWe’re Invisible, Too: Showing Respect for Healthcare Workers by Cheryl Bailey
A retired gynecologic oncologist reflects on her own career and realizes how watercolor artwork can allow for even healthcare providers to be seen.
Read moreLeaning Close: "No more interventions. No more transfusions." A reflection on mortality and morbidity rounds by pediatrician-writer Laura Johnsrude
When I read “All Tuned Up” by Albert Howard Carter III (Spring 2021 Intima), I remembered a pediatric intensive care unit patient from my own 1980’s residency experience. In Carter’s poem, a medical resident presents a case during mortality and morbidity rounds. The resident is moved to tears as he tells the gathered audience about the death of a patient he knew well. A senior doctor “gently” offers context and says, “Maybe he was just tired.”
Mercifully, I’ve muffled memories from some of the deaths during my residency training in the pediatric intensive care unit. But I remember a slight girl of about sixteen with silky, wavy hair, lying in a metal-frame bed parallel to the wall against the window, in silhouette.
Read moreThe Healing Power of Empathy: Does it Exist? Can it be Acquired?
In this reflection, a retired surgeon examines the research findings of evidence-based medicine to uncover whether empathy, in addition to the principles and practice of narrative medicine, can facilitate deeper healing.
Read moreWhen Cure and Language are Inadequate, What Remains? Reflecting on bearing witness by Rachel Cicoria
Recalling the loss of her husband, Mike, Dianne Avey’s essay“Morning Light” (Spring 2023 Intima) reaches back a decade to a quiet September morning on Anderson Island in Washington. Avey, a writer and nurse practitioner, draws us, however, not to the moment of her husband’s death but to a “place of quiet morning light.” This liminal stasis exceeds cure and speech and, in my view, renders the “human” (as defined by technical and linguistic competencies) indeterminate. Yet, beyond our abilities to fix and to say, there remains “the only thing we can ever do”: being present and bearing witness.
Read moreThe Individual Nature of Care by Joanne Clarkson
A nurse examines a clinical encounter through her poetry and appreciates the individual nature of care.
Read moreOn Work-Worn Hands and Gestures of Love, a short essay by poet and educator, Joan Baranow
A writer and poet honors the memory of her mother by finding the parallels between her own work and the story of another mother and daughter.
Read moreScripting Death: When Words Fail – In Conversation with Liana Meffert’s “Death is Usually an Easy Diagnosis” by Paula Holmes-Rodman
“A medically assisted death, such as I recount in my essay “Mercies, Or, the Mostly True Tale of a Narratively Assisted Death” (Intima Spring 2023), is the antithesis of a traumatic ending in an ER. It is highly anticipated, fully orchestrated and well rehearsed – on everyone’s part but my own.”
Read moreOn Knowing
A nurse ponders the role of hope in the clinical encounter and whether the holy can be found within the realm of medicine.
Read moreOn Sinatra, Bach, and Daughters: The Power of True Joy in the Face of Illness
A medical student reflects on the loss of their father to a devastating neurodegenerative disease as well as the power that music can hold during the illness experience.
Read moreThe Importance of Providing Compassionate Palliative and End-of-Life Care
A writer reflects on her own mother’s experience with death and dying and argues for the greater recognition of palliative care in the clinical encounter.
Read moreScripting Death: When Words Fail – In Conversation with Liana Meffert’s “Death is Usually an Easy Diagnosis” by Paula Holmes-Rodman
In reading Liana Meffert’s “Death is Usually an Easy Diagnosis,” I was intrigued by her reflections on the learning and limitation of choreographed roles and scripted dialogue in pronouncing death and informing bereaved families.
Read moreReligious Moments in Medical Practice by internist John Pierce
A retired physician reflects on his glimpses into religion and spirituality while confronting his patients’ illness and suffering—as well as his own.
Read moreLet Me Speak My Free Mind into You: Seeking Genuine Connection in Medical Practice
A medical student examines two poems published in this journal in order to advocate for genuine connection in medical practice between patients and physicians.
Read moreAfter Testimony, Tribute
A testimony and tribute to one writer’s mother who passed away from COVID-19.
Read moreThe Reduction of Human Life and Tight Narrative
Writing against the backdrop of her husband’s stay in hospice care, a retired professor examines how the reduction of human life in the midst of suffering can be summarized in succinct narrative.
Read moreThe Beautiful Surprise
What is the beautiful surprise that can be found in the clinical encounter between patient and physician? A writer and nurse explains.
Read moreA Transplant Patient's Reflection on Living While Dying
An artist and organ transplant recipient considers the isolation of her own illness experience and further explores these issues in her graphic medicine comic, published in this very journal.
Read moreOn Healing, Suffering, and End-Of-Life Care
A medical student reflects on two pieces of fiction published in this journal that deal with the duality of suffering and healing.
Read moreI Am Moments / I Am Nature
Through collage art and poetry, a pathologist comes to understand that our anatomical selves are made up of the same building blocks that comprise all life on earth.
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