Words from the Wards

This category contains reflections on student clinical experience.

Alyssa Guo Alyssa Guo (3 Posts)

Editor-in-Chief

University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville

Hello! I’m Alyssa Guo, and I’m a fourth-year medical student at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine at Greenville. I received my bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Neuroscience from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’m excited to be part of Mosaic in Medicine to share voices that are often missed in medicine. I hope that our joint efforts in shining a light on difficult topics spark conversations that will change medicine for the better. It is also my hope that MiM encourages more reflective practice and encourage more narrative medicine publications, so that we can capture moments of history and their impacts on the healthcare profession. We are working towards building MiM to serve as a beacon of light in promoting health equity, allowing for those who come after us to understand the events that shaped us through reading our publications. Feel free to get in touch with me at aaguo@email.sc.edu if you have any questions about MiM!




The Difficult Patient

Medical student Allen Betts explores the often underrated effect of psychosocial determinants and the integral part they play in the influencing health and well-being. Read more to find out how he has come to appreciate the soft skills a physician gleans through patient encounters rather than through books.

My Hero

Showing love in times of loss, being a beacon of hope, taking time to spend with family and regaining our humanity are just some of the values medical student writer Karl Heward emphasizes should be reflected in our practice of medicine while demonstrating how personal tragedy courageously inspired him to adopt this mindset.

The I Do’s … and Don’ts of Medicine

Our task in donning roles of professionalism as health care providers comes hand-in-hand with all the aspects of our identity and the tolls that come with it. This is especially significant as the younger generation, consisting of more and more intersectional identities, becomes more commonplace not only in society at large but also in the health care world. However, when this ideal of professionalism is compounded by someone like me — a minority woman colored by a recurrent, pervasive backdrop of objectification for pleasure by Caucasian cultures; a female person of color who feels the need to tread carefully to succeed in a field historically dominated by men — where does it leave us?

Sara Khan Sara Khan (1 Posts)

Medical Student Contributing Writer

Albany Medical College

Sara Khan is a third-year medical student at Albany Medical College. She is pursuing a career in Pediatrics. She is especially passionate about caring for under-resourced and under-served populations.