The 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.

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How to Write About Cancer: How Poetry Can Break the Rules by writer Lynne Byler

Recently, I read Adam Conner’s short story “How to Write about Your Cancer” (Fall 2022 Intima) with amusement and recognition. And if I transform the rules in it to a scorecard, my poem, “Minds Go Where Bodies Can't” ends in the red.

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The 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.

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Scripting 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.

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Waiting: A reflection on anticipating a diagnosis by poet RN Amy Haddad

A nurse, poet, and educator ponders the lot of patients—one that often includes loss of identity, dislocation in time and space, and of course, waiting.

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Written in the Stars: A Reflection on Youth Cancer by Will Moody

For every young adult diagnosed with cancer, a time comes when we ask ourselves a question.

Why?

Why did this happen to me? Why now? They are not questions we want an answer to, but as humans, we crave finding meaning in our lives. We do it because the alternative is accepting that cosmic randomness determines our very breath.

Why did this happen to me? Why now? They are not questions we want an answer to, but as humans, we crave finding meaning in our lives. We do it because the alternative is accepting that cosmic randomness determines our very breath.

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