Doing
Deadlines rush on, relentlessly. / Another email signed, / “Best regards.”
Off the Shelf is our section for creative works by medical students.
Deadlines rush on, relentlessly. / Another email signed, / “Best regards.”
Studying blood clots / While I sit for hours on end / Affixing my own.
You’ve taken everything / Nothing is left
Screams. Tears. Despair. / A sense of sadness in the atmosphere.
Uvalde / I hear the cries of children as they play at the school across the street / They are joyful and exuberant as they play in the Texas heat / unaware of the fear that will soon be unleashed
The hospital room is / fair, square, sterile — / by its vapid / medical posters / and lusterless hospital tools.
Ruchica Chandnani, Class of 2024 at the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, contributes this poem as an in-Training writer and current managing editor of the publication since 2021.
Tears for the dead, tears for the living / who persist in this world that is so unforgiving
In my white coat, / I ask for forgiveness. / Forgive me, / to the weary homeless man
Nita Chen, MD, movement disorders fellow at the Normal Fixel Institute for Neurological Disease, contributes this graphic medicine piece as a former in-Training writer, editor, columnist and featured artist for our print book in-Training: Stories from Tomorrow’s Physicians, Volume 2.
General: / Patient is in NAD, / except for being awoken at 7 a.m. by someone he has never met
We put out this call for visual artwork several months ago, to gauge our communities’ interest and willingness to embrace a new medium of expression on our website. We asked artists to submit with their work an artist’s statement to reflect on what prompted their creating their work and how their art reflects on their experiences in medicine.