What is the purpose of the now-ubiquitous medical television drama in the age of pandemics? And whose voice does it center: the physician’s or the patient’s?
Read moreTo Enhance, Supplement, and Support
What is the physician’s role in the clinical encounter, and what is their responsibility to the patient? A physician reflects.
Read moreOn Witnessing Another’s Pain—Or Is It Our Own?
When one exists in close proximity to the pain of another, whose testimony is it? A scholar reflects on the shared experience that can result from suffering.
Read moreHands-On versus Hands-Off Medicine: Reflections of a Surgeon
Inspired by two pieces written by medical students, a surgeon reflects on his own experiences in medicine and the role that human touch plays in the clinical encounter.
Read moreA reflection on the poem, "Letter to a 93-year-old Cadaver who Died from Multiple Causes" by Christine Nichols
The fearlessness in this work will inspire others, and brings an essence of both respect and what is holy to what might otherwise be purely clinical.Read more
Of Humans and Aliens by Andrea Hansell
“Hospitals tend to have an extraterrestrial air. Shiny structures filled with yawning expanses of slick, sterile floors, strange beeping machines, and masked creatures with gloves cutting open sleeping bodies.”
Read moreWhen 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.
Read moreDoes A Poem A Day Keep the Doctor Away? Thoughts on Injecting A Dose of Culture in Medical Waiting Rooms by Debbie McCulliss
Scholars have begun encouraging doctors to gain more insight from their patients through narrative writing, especially poetry. According to Dr. Rita Charon, director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and co-editor of Literature and Medicine, “With narrative competence, physicians can reach and join their patients in illness, recognize their own personal journeys through medicine, acknowledge kinship with and duties toward other health care professionals, and inaugurate consequential discourse with the public about health care” (as cited in Encke, 2011).
Read moreHow Meta-Narratives Protect and Serve Us by Maureen Hirthler
As I was writing my MFA thesis this summer, I thought daily about narrative. After all, both medicine and memoir are about stories—ours, our patients—and my MFA has been about learning how to tell stories well. Stories should move us forward; occasionally they hold us back. Sometimes the true meaning of stories takes years to uncover.
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