Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
Ervin (Erv) is beginning his general intern year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and recently graduated from the Uniformed Services Univerity of the Health Sciences in May 2022. While in medical school, he was the co-director for the on-campus peer-led curriculum aimed to foster conversations about diversity, bias, discrimination, and inclusion in both medicine and the military. His interests include medical education, promoting diversity, and utilizing the arts to augment the healing nature of medicine.
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.
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.
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.
Dr. Ervin Anies introduces a reverse poem to help delve into the multifactorial and complicated picture that is treating chronic pain. His poem reflects the struggles and triumphs a provider can encounter while dealing with chronic pain patients.
Medical student Olivia Dhaliwal reflects on the weight of medical school and her feelings of “hollow”
Medical student Alyssa Guo shares excerpts of her diary with reflections of her first times in medicine as an Asian American.
Medical student Leonard Wang presents his views on patient advocacy by exploring the role of patient stories, in particular an anecdote from a recent trip to Guatemala during his winter break.
Medical student Micky Akinrodoye reflects on the importance of advocating for patients by taking into consideration of a myriad of factors influencing their care.
Medical student Katelyn Girtain writes about her experiences as a child of a disabled mother that contributed to the lack of proper insurance and ultimately the occurrence of preventable health issues. She also explores relevant policies and the lack of literature on the impacts of parental disability/lack of insurance on children.
Medical Student Contributing Writer
University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville
Katelyn is a medical student with a passion for issues around access to care.
