Medical Student Contributing Writer
New York Medical College
Esewi Aifuwa is a fourth-year medical student at New York Medical College with a passion for writing and research. He aspires to a career in Hematology-Oncology. Outside of medicine, he enjoys weightlifting, video games, movies, and spending time with friends and family.
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.
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.
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?”
This piece is a reflection of the first few months of Sriya’s clinical years experience. There are a thousand different stories all happening at the same time in the same hospital, and each of them has plenty to learn from and cherish. This piece is a reflection on the privilege that we get as learners and future providers to learn about and from others’ stories.
Medha Palnati describes an encounter she had with a patient who she met at the Backstretch Clinic, a clinic that serves the undocumented workers that care for the horses at the racetrack, as he was having a myocardial infarction. This encounter highlights the conversation Medha had with this patient while waiting for the ambulance to transport him to the hospital, and the solace that they found in each other in that moment.
Emma Stenz’s first time witnessing a patient’s death helped her realize the role of a physician in maintaining emotional composure and acting with nonmaleficence towards the patient, both in life and in death.
In this piece, Afua Ofori-Darko discusses how medical education has focused on tokenism on a way to achieve diversity. Specifically, Afua discusses her journey as the token Black girl and how tokenism harms URiM students and the institutions to which they belong.
Having been born and raised in Iran, Negin Khosravi has experienced horrors that are untold. As ongoing protests happen in Iran and as an aspiring physician leader, Negin hopes to shed some light on what is happening and advocate for people. It is time for racism, discrimination and lack of freedom to end.
Rachel Lawson describes her challenging experiences during her first year of medical school at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and how her experience was profoundly impacted by a vaccination clinic.
The Ward as Medicine is about how one’s fellow patients on the psychiatry ward can act as mirrors, teachers and inspirations to a patient. Specifically, it is about a mom who, hospitalized for suicidality stemming from her guilt and anger over how she has mothered her children, gets reconnected with the identity of motherhood while interacting with others on the unit.
Medical student Saud Rehman has written a collection of poems focusing on the lockdown of March 2020 with artwork to give a visual representation of how he felt. Often times the manifestations of moods unrelated to coursework go overlooked, especially in medicine, and Saud hopes that these provide a representation of the humanity behind students going through difficult times.
Medical Student Contributing Writer
CUNY School of Medicine
Saud is a first generation third year medical student at the CUNY School of medicine from Brooklyn. Saud has interests in interventional radiology, patient centered care, and educational medicine. Saud uses poetry and artistic visuals as a form of expression & catharsis. His other interests include hiking, bike-riding, cooking, and basketball.
