In my professional role as a medical illustrator, I'm often drawn to a good metaphor. As a patient, the allure of metaphor can be dangerous.
Read moreListening to Beethoven: A Reflection on Professional Responsibility and Personal Recognition by poet Susan Carlson
“I like Beethoven the best!” is a declaration made by a patient of Mitali Chaudhary, as she readies to leave his hospital room. A busy senior medical resident at the University of Toronto, Chaudhary juggles many demanding responsibilities with her desire to get to know this elderly patient. In her Field Notes essay titled “Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5,” published in Intima’s Fall 2023 issue, she recalls how she’d tried to get her patient to respond to questions about symptomatology, all the while aware that twenty-three other patients – along with a group of junior residents and medical students – were awaiting her time and attention. In that moment, she finds herself turning away from an opportunity for a personal interaction with him in order to ensure she manages her tasks appropriately.
Read moreThe Embodied Connection in Patient-Provider Interaction
A former PICU nurse examines the power of both embodiment and gaze in the clinical encounter.
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 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 moreHow Patients Teach Us by Catalina Flores
A nurse contemplates how and why patients are made to feel like burdens—simply for having several needs.
Read moreThe Luxury of Walking Away: An MS4 meditates on time, isolation and the comforts of home
A medical student contemplates her roles as a physician-in-training and learns to appreciate the privilege she possesses—unlike her patients—in walking away from the clinical space.
Read moreWho Knows How the Body Turns? A Reflection on Lyme and Rheumatoid Arthritis by Sheila Luna
A writer living with rheumatoid arthritis finds companionship in another writer living with Lyme disease. Although these two diseases may be different, they continue to manifest in similar ways.
Read moreWhat's a "Good Patient"? A Reflection by Jacqueline Ellis
A scholar wonders if and how she can become her doctor’s favorite patient—and what that may mean for the sacred patient-physician relationship.
Read moreI Lost a Patient Last Week by Carolyn Welch
Carolyn Welch worked for many years as a pediatric intensive care nurse and currently works as a family nurse practitioner. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her poetry collection, The Garden of Fragile Being, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her poem "Relapse" is in the Spring 2018 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine
I lost a patient last week. This is not unexpected in the world of family practice. I have lost countless patients. During most of my career in pediatric intensive care, however, I lost them dramatically. They departed with fight and drama, chest compressions and epinephrine, and intensity. This patient left quietly, succumbing to congestive heart failure. He came in every week or two with waterlogged ankles and lungs when he forgot to take his meds. He missed his wife. He lingered to talk. His going was like the tide shifting in Ron Lands' poem “Listen to the Ocean.” Some other shore was calling him.
There are moments when we notice the breath is like the ocean rising and falling or like Lands' “moonlight floating on the water.” My own daughter’s battle with schizophrenia is teaching me the tending of good days, the collecting of moments.
Last summer, as I watered the garden, a hummingbird flew close, dipped in and out of the spray—his thirst and my offering meeting there on a hot uneventful day in July. Diana calls on good days between relapses. Lands' patient or father or mother labors to breathe until reminded of the light and the water. Waves bring what they have and take what they find. Lands' voice eases his listener from one moment to the next.
My patient’s death leaves a gap in the schedule, an unfilled prescription, a message from his son. And we go on. This smallness of death is part of its tragedy to those of us working close to it, but also when it visits our lives. The room get cleaned, the bills arrive, the dogs whimper for their supper. Some of us write poems in an effort to translate our experience and to tend to these moments of being.
Carolyn Welch worked for many years as a pediatric intensive care nurse and currently works as a family nurse practitioner. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Carolyn’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, Sundog, Tar River Poetry, Conduit, Connecticut River Review, High Desert Journal, The Southeast Review, Zone 3, The Minnesota Review, American Journal of Nursing and other literary journals. Her poetry collection, The Garden of Fragile Being, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her poem "Relapse" is in the Spring 2018 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine
When the Medical Mask Slips: The Contradictions of Care by Vik Reddy
Patients want caregivers to be professional and competent. At the same time, patients expect a level of compassion and empathy from medical professionals. These two impulses can be contradictory.
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