A writer and poet finds inspiration in the body’s architecture and corporeal underpinnings.
Read moreA Sound Mind in a Sound Body, a reflection by poet Anastasia Vassos
© Pillar of Light by Jacqueline Pflaum-Carlson. Spring 2022 Intima
The Gifts Reserved for Age: A Reflection by Richard Scott Morehead
A professor of medicine reminisces about his former student, whose work appears alongside his own in this very journal.
Read moreWho Knows How the Body Turns? A Reflection on Lyme and Rheumatoid Arthritis by Sheila Luna
A writer living with rheumatoid arthritis finds companionship in another writer living with Lyme disease. Although these two diseases may be different, they continue to manifest in similar ways.
Read morePoets on Poets: A Look Back and Forward by Ellen Goldsmith
A poet reflects on what companion poets and their poetry can offer us in the face of unexpected illness and loss.
Read moreWhat's a "Good Patient"? A Reflection by Jacqueline Ellis
A scholar wonders if and how she can become her doctor’s favorite patient—and what that may mean for the sacred patient-physician relationship.
Read moreHow to "Do" Breast Cancer by Dena Brownstein
A retired physician not only examines her personal experience with cancer, but also questions whether there is a single “right” way to perform a cancer diagnosis.
Read moreOn Caring and Suffering by Michael Evans, William Doan, Kiernan Riley, Kalei Kowalchik, and Logan DeSanto
A nurse offers a plea in the face of a worsening pandemic and increasing burnout among healthcare professionals.
Read moreThe Hospital Gift Shop: An Unlikely Refuge by Maureen Hirthler
An emergency physician fondly looks back on an unlikely refuge within the hospital: the gift shop.
Read moreWhat’s the Right Way to Die? And Where? A reflection by poet Kathryn Paul
Can we decide where we should die? A writer and former caregiver reflects on offering comfort during one’s final moments.
Read moreCuring Bodies: How Uncertainty and Variation Shape Early Experiences in Medicine by Anna Harvey Bluemel
A physician reflects on the uncertainty that comes with the study of the human body, and the unpredictability that comes with the pursuit of medicine.
Read moreThe Role of the Medical Television Drama in Cinemeducation
What is the purpose of the now-ubiquitous medical television drama in the age of pandemics? And whose voice does it center: the physician’s or the patient’s?
Read moreTo Enhance, Supplement, and Support
What is the physician’s role in the clinical encounter, and what is their responsibility to the patient? A physician reflects.
Read moreOn Witnessing Another’s Pain—Or Is It Our Own?
When one exists in close proximity to the pain of another, whose testimony is it? A scholar reflects on the shared experience that can result from suffering.
Read moreHands-On versus Hands-Off Medicine: Reflections of a Surgeon
Inspired by two pieces written by medical students, a surgeon reflects on his own experiences in medicine and the role that human touch plays in the clinical encounter.
Read moreWritten in the Stars: A Reflection on Youth Cancer by Will Moody
For every young adult diagnosed with cancer, a time comes when we ask ourselves a question.
Why?
Why did this happen to me? Why now? They are not questions we want an answer to, but as humans, we crave finding meaning in our lives. We do it because the alternative is accepting that cosmic randomness determines our very breath.
Why did this happen to me? Why now? They are not questions we want an answer to, but as humans, we crave finding meaning in our lives. We do it because the alternative is accepting that cosmic randomness determines our very breath.
Read moreBedside Mannerisms: Finding the time to care by pediatrics resident Vidya Viswanathan
In medical training, there is an increasing didactic focus on empathy and professionalism. In many of these sessions, I have learned certain skills: Sit down at the patient’s level. Ask them open-ended questions. Don’t interrupt. Use an in-person, video or phone interpreter. These skills are helpful. But often, they run up against the great limiting factor in many of our clinical encounters: time.
Read moreSirens and Hummingbirds: How Poetry Can Make Sense out of the Mundane by MS4 Anna Dovre
As a medical student, I've gotten into the habit of saving folded-up scrap paper from the hospital and stealing moments during rounds or lectures to jot down scattered words and phrases. They're things I can't get out of my head, like "white cheddar Cheez-its® and stale cigarettes" or "I'm not a bad Mom." Snippets that don't make sense on their own, but together they have a strange sort of alchemy. The distilled essence of a day's humanity. A tragicomic piece of found poetry. After my first year of clinical rotations, I decided to sit down and see what I could cobble together to find out whether meaning would come if I made space for it. What arrived was, if not meaningful, at least interesting, and it eventually became "Self Portrait of the Artist as Medical Student."
Read moreLauds: A solitary prayer at the scrub sink by pediatric surgeon Kristen A. Zeller
In the hospital, routines carry us through our days and lend a semblance of structure to the chaos of lives disrupted by illness. Some routines happen on a large scale—weekly gatherings of departments for Grand Rounds, hospital leadership meetings for safety huddles, the hustle of getting a cadre of operating rooms started nearly simultaneously in the predawn. Other routines are more intimate—the sequenced process of doing a sterile central line dressing change, the donning and doffing of PPE outside a patient’s room, the one-one-one nursing handoff at shift change.
Read moreWhen the “Clock of the Living” Runs Down: A Reflection by clinical social worker and chaplain Betty Morningstar
The fractured stories at the end of life often reflect an ineffable but powerful experience of creativity, insight or even revelation. These opportunities arise because the dying person doesn’t see time according to the clock of the living. Imagine how much one could conceive of were time not of the essence.
Read moreThe Shit Poems: A Reflection by Drea Burbank
I am interested in the juxtaposition between my use of poetry to shed traumatic experiences and memories from medicine, and the description of William Carlos Williams by Britta Gustavson (“Re-embodying Medicine: William Carlos Williams and the Ethics of Attention,” Spring 2020 Intima).
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