Medical Student Contributing Writer
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Aish is a fourth year medical student applying to internal medicine. She is interested in narrative medicine and women's health. In her free time, she enjoys cooking and playing board games.
Because medicine reflects the commonality of human struggles, healthcare workers can see parallels between their patients’ lives and their own. This piece speaks to the impact that witnessing tough patient encounters can have on healthcare workers.
These poem stanzas help to provide further fidelity on the small specialty that is Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PM&R). While many other specialties focus on specific organs, “our organ” is function and this piece hopefully sheds some light on how we preserve it and improve it in all the patients we treat.
Medical student recollects hospitalization with pneumonia as a pivotal childhood experience that shaped his values. The care he received from dedicated clinicians and his family instilled trust and resilience, inspiring his pursuit of medicine. These reflections resurfaced during his white coat ceremony, affirming his commitment to embodying these principles in his future practice.
Food production and distribution and medical training and care have been similarly corrupted due to the prioritization of profit and emphasis on end results that value volume over quality by implementing assembly-line-like protocols. This has led to a crisis in preventable chronic disease, and a dearth of primary care physicians; both crises can begin to be healed through the use of small-scale, community based efforts utilizing biodynamic regenerative agriculture and local farmer’s markets, and the provision of care by Direct Primary Care family physicians who can provide affordable and accessible whole-person, whole-life care.
Lisa Roskes describes the many lessons learned from my close relationship with her grandmother. Despite choosing a career in pediatrics, these pearls guide her interactions with patients and their families.
The poem describes the profound impact of an encounter between Catherin Potin, the narrator, recovering from a motor vehicle accident, and a young patient with a similar experience. Throughout our interaction, the patient’s strength and resilience illuminate a path towards healing, showing the narrator the power of shared vulnerability in overcoming trauma. This encounter serves as a reminder of the reciprocal nature of healing in medicine and the personal growth that can arise from patient interactions.
Taylor Selby wrote this poem while trying to manage her time between studying for boards and her grandmas birthday party. To her, it means prioritizing her relationships and mental health while still working towards the goal to be an intelligent and caring doctor.
This piece is inspired by a patient encounter with a middle-aged woman who was recently diagnosed with a severe and malignant cancer. I saw her in the primary care setting, and she was undergoing chemotherapy at that time. She had a unique demeanor about her and she shared with me how she waited all her life to do the things she really wanted to do and now she was unable to do a lot of those things. She told me her and her friend now share a joke whenever they are debating doing something fun/risky/random in which they say, “What are you waiting for, chemo?”
Elise Kao MS3 encounters a struggling addiction patient in the Emergency Department who reinforces their determination to pursue psychiatry and advocate for forgotten patients.
Melinda Staub reflects on surgery as a both violence and healing, delving on medicine’s intricate ethical and practical landscape. Through an acrylic painting, she demonstrates her reflections on this topic.
Shannon Fang, medical student, comments on the necessity of processing emotionally stressful encounters in medicine.
Medical student Medha Palnati describes barriers to care, and highlights the need for greater awareness and sensitivity in patient care.
Medical Student Contributing Writer
Albany Medical College
Medha has a deep-rooted passion for aiding the underserved, especially the migrant and refugee community. As a future physician, she hopes to use her skills to provide equitable healthcare to those in need.
