In my article ‘Semantics in the Elevator’ a doctor reflects on his culpability after a colonoscopic perforation (not based on a real incident). The patient’s anatomy is fleetingly blamed; then he considers the fact that he just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time – the perforation could well have happened if a colleague had been doing the procedure.
Read moreShould You Limit Your Emotional Connections with Your Patients? Two differing views, by Andrea Eisenberg
Eisenberg looks at the role of emotion in patient care.
Read moreThe Art of Sparing: When the Patient May Not Want to "Hear it Straight" by Xanthia Tucker
In her poem “Overwhelmed” (Spring 2013 Intima), Kendra Peterson shares a terminal diagnosis with her patient. “I told the harsh and ugly truth/ of glioblastoma multiforme,” she writes, “my practiced words unresectable and infiltrating.” In honoring his wish “just to hear it straight,” her words both describe and become his diagnosis. Once spoken, they are “unresectable and infiltrating” his understanding of the rest of his life.
Read moreA Matrix for Healing: Understanding the Psychic and Moral Wounds on Clinicians During Wartime by Michael Brown, OD
Dr. Brown, in his evocative and poignant essay “The Moral Matrix of Wartime Medicine,” (Intima, Fall 2015), describes his experiences as a young physician during the Vietnam War and both the immediate and long-term effects of the psychic and moral wounds he and other military medical personnel accrued while serving in combat zones.
Read moreHistory Lessons: What Doctors Learn When Doing Patient Histories by Natasha Massoudi
We learn in medical school to take full social, family and physical histories with a new patient. We use checkboxes to run down the list of points in each history. We are taught to be thorough and document each answer.