Tag: humanism in medicine

Katelee Barrett Mueller Katelee Barrett Mueller (2 Posts)

Contributing Writer

Tufts University School of Medicine

Katelee Barrett Mueller is an eighth year MD/PhD student at Tufts University School of Medicine, with interests in clinical and translational research and narrative medicine.




The Talking Cure: Atul Gawande Makes the Case for Humanism in End-of-Life Care

Published by Katelee Barrett Mueller

Many medical students made the choice to pursue their career path in their college years or even in high school, and nearly all doctors have chosen their profession by the end of their third decade. These are exhilarating years for young people. These are years where life can seem rich with freedom, opportunity, and, notably, with length. Dedicating a decade to medical training can seem like a choice that, though not easy, represents a worthy investment of one’s youth.

Matt

Published by Annie Robinson

How can doctors-in-training integrate policy change with patient care? Matt, a fourth-year medical student in Philadelphia deciding whether to pursue clinical medicine at all, shares his divergent path through medical school that involved taking two years off. He reflects how his work with the government on systemic health care issues and later in medical communications informed and reinvigorated his work on the wards.

Breaking Down the Barrier

Published by Pratik Kanabur

I am an engineering graduate. My rigorous education has taught me that when presented with a problem, I should systematically narrow down solutions to figure out the best possible one. During my second week of medical school I had my first standardized patient encounter. I felt very pleased with myself when I walked out the door after having asked the patient specific questions about her foot pain and been rewarded with the details of her worries.

Roma

Published by Annie Robinson

How can doctors-in-training protect themselves from the competitiveness and negativity often fostered in medical school? Roma, a fourth-year medical student at Jefferson pursuing a career in family medicine, describes how she shifted her goal from getting good grades to fostering strong relationships with patients.

Breeze

Published by Jennifer Tsai

A woman once told me that babies cry at the slightest breeze because that is the greatest level of discomfort that they have yet experienced in their short lives. It is a reminder that we can persevere through life’s tribulations. That we grow from adversity. That new challenges make past trials smaller. That this, too, shall pass.

In Response to the Editorial Board: Empathy Resurrected

Published by Sarab Sodhi

Editor’s note: This article is in response to “From the Editorial Board: Empathy Decline in Medical Education.” I’m going to be an emergency medicine physician, and my medical school career has spanned delivering babies and telling a family their loved one was dying. I’ve acquired a veneer of cynicism for my colleagues, and a layer of emotional armor. It’s that emotional armor that lets me walk away after a patient I’ve been performing CPR on dies, and be able to go to the next room.

From the Editorial Board: Empathy Decline in Medical Education

Published by Will Jaffee, DO

There is a well studied phenomenon in medical education: student physicians begin to burn out out early. According to several multi-center studies, burnout occurs in roughly 50 percent of students before they even earn their medical degrees. Personally, this manifests in the fading width of the bright smiles we adorned during our white coat ceremonies while our teeth begin to change to a color that only coffee-executives could be proud of. In short, we begin to care less.

Doctoring: Who Is it Really For?

Published by Nita Chen, MD

In Chinese, the term for doctor is yi sheng, which roughly translates into “medicate to life.” From this interpretation, the mission of a physician is to restore livelihood to patients, whether in the literal or in the metaphorical “wholesomeness of life” sense. While this may seem intuitive, the ingredients of “quality of life” and “satisfactory care” are much less clear and much more complex.

You Set the Tone

Published by Sarab Sodhi

I’ve realized recently that there are a few things about which medical school teaches you nothing. There’s the fabled four-year curriculum that all neophytes believe will make them into educated, caring, considerate and capable physicians. And then there’s the reality that most of what it is to really be a physician is learned in the “unwritten curriculum,” (…)

Can Reading Fiction Make You a Better Doctor?

Published by Alison Trainor

The first two years of medical school, for most students, consist mainly of studying from books, lectures, notes and papers. If a student is having trouble understanding the transporters in the kidney, they can read their notes or review the lecture. Later on in medical school, students spend more time on clinical clerkships. If on a rotation a student is told they need to work on their physical exam skills, they can go to the library and check out a book on physical diagnosis. When a lab result comes back on a patient that may be confusing, a student can quickly look it up on the internet.

Darling Baby Boy

Published by Diane Brackett

During morning rounds, the resident and I stopped by our young patient’s room. He was technically five weeks old, but was born five weeks prematurely, so all in all, he was delightfully newborn-sized. The nurse was sitting in a recliner, holding him. He was well enough to be held. We finished rounds, ate breakfast, and headed to the OR. Our work unexpectedly finished early for the day, and I was free to go. Instead of immediately leaving the hospital, I headed back to our young patient’s room.

Diane Brackett Diane Brackett (2 Posts)

Medical Student Editor

University of Central Florida College of Medicine

My name is Diane Brackett and I'm a Class of 2016 medical student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. I'm from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and spent my undergraduate years in Maine. I love to go for walks, bike rides, and play ice hockey in my free time. I will be doing my residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.