Palo Alto neurologist Kendra Peterson's poem “Difficult Patient” (Fall 2017 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine), and the patient who inspired my “American Sonnet for an Addict” (Fall-Winter 2025-26 Intima) are prototypical victims of name-calling – a ubiquitous clinical behavior taught exclusively in the so-called hidden curriculum of medical education. These patients are our albatrosses, another name we ascribe, recalling the curse that befell the entire ship’s crew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous mariner following his killing of an albatross in the poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” They curse us. They burden and encumber us.
Read moreWhy are patients hesitant to tell the truth? A reflection on communication by public health scientist and activist Mariana Mcdonald
Communication. Open and forthright—what we want as patients and what providers require of us. But that can be difficult, as reflected in my short story “The Vent,” (Intima Fall 2025), where I explore a seriously injured man’s thoughts in the ICU. He complains: “Every time I went in to the clinic, they started asking the exercise question, no matter what I was there for. Got the flu, feverish and coughing, and there they are quizzing me about exercise.” His frustrations lead him to respond dishonestly to his providers’ questions: “It got so I would tell them what I thought they wanted to hear just to get them off my back. Said I took a walk every day, hardly ever drank... All lies, or fibs...”
Read moreDesperate to be Well: A reflection about the level of comfort (or discomfort) about what we wear when we're ill by Liddy Grantland
“We don't control what happens to our bodies, but we do control how we respond. How we adorn. And how we move through the world.”
Read moreRemember, Everything Changed Five Years Ago Today by public health physician Emily Groot
When I read the first reports of atypical pneumonia out of China, I wasn’t worried. Now, in hindsight, this is embarrassing to admit. But every few months, there’s something new. MERS-CoV, Zika, enterovirus D68. We watch, we wait, sometimes we prepare. Usually, the impact is small. Or, at least, the impact is far away: cruelly and unfairly, caring is the inverse of distance. So, forgive me if, at first, I did not care about SARS-CoV-2.
Read moreCaring and the Challenges of Social Convention, by Jeffrey Millstein, MD
An internist reflects on his short story as well as a fellow physician’s personal essay and explores the complex issue of crossing implicit social boundaries in the clinician-patient relationship.
Read moreThe Healing Power of Empathy: Does it Exist? Can it be Acquired?
In this reflection, a retired surgeon examines the research findings of evidence-based medicine to uncover whether empathy, in addition to the principles and practice of narrative medicine, can facilitate deeper healing.
Read moreCrossing the Line: The Power of Touch by Catherine Humikowski
A pediatric intensive care physician advocates for crossing the imaginary line and using the power of touch to comfort those in need.
Read moreThe Individual Nature of Care by Joanne Clarkson
A nurse examines a clinical encounter through her poetry and appreciates the individual nature of care.
Read moreOn Work-Worn Hands and Gestures of Love, a short essay by poet and educator, Joan Baranow
A writer and poet honors the memory of her mother by finding the parallels between her own work and the story of another mother and daughter.
Read moreOn Knowing
A nurse ponders the role of hope in the clinical encounter and whether the holy can be found within the realm of medicine.
Read moreOn Being Confined
A retired hematologist explores the importance of clinical communication and health literacy by close reading two pieces published in this journal.
Read moreLeave Work at Work
Which story is heard, and by whom? Which story do people want to hear, and why? A COVID nurse provides explanations as well as recommendations about storytelling.
Read moreThe Embodied Connection in Patient-Provider Interaction
A former PICU nurse examines the power of both embodiment and gaze in the clinical encounter.
Read moreStories Make Us Human by Krista Puttler
“Ms. Paul, I can’t give you any more pain medication, it isn’t time.”
Edith’s eyes were closed. She was in the single patient room again, the one that had an anteroom with an extra sink that connected to her room by a sliding glass door. The residents always made sure both sets of sliding doors were closed before talking about her.
Read moreReligious Moments in Medical Practice by internist John Pierce
A retired physician reflects on his glimpses into religion and spirituality while confronting his patients’ illness and suffering—as well as his own.
Read moreObjectivity versus Art: A Reflection on Technology in Medicine
A physician-novelist ponders the troubling implications of the increasing technologization of health care and its encroachment on the art of medicine.
Read moreAbsences in Cortney Davis' "It Was the Second Patient of the Day"
A writer and father ponders the power of absence in the clinical encounter, as well as the power of presence.
Read moreLet Me Speak My Free Mind into You: Seeking Genuine Connection in Medical Practice
A medical student examines two poems published in this journal in order to advocate for genuine connection in medical practice between patients and physicians.
Read moreAfter Testimony, Tribute
A testimony and tribute to one writer’s mother who passed away from COVID-19.
Read moreHungry for the Everyday: On Jennifer Abernathy’s "Hunger"
A nurse ponders the role of food in the ICU setting—as well as the hunger that it can stir and the memories that it can evoke.
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