Contributing Writer
Medical University of Vienna
Anna is a fifth year medical student at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria. In 2018 she also graduated from the University of Vienna with a Master in history and art. She enjoys sports, painting and reading works of philosophy in her free time. After graduating medical school in the future, Anna would like to pursue a career in general medicine.
This work is about vulnerability and the feeling of being vulnerable. There is a special exposure to vulnerability for everyone who is taking part in healthcare systems, be it of course as a patient who potentially suffers restrictions in their physical and/or psychic integrity trough illness or also the caregivers who are under pressure to be attentive, know the right things, act and speak properly all the time.
As we progressed through our other coursework simultaneously, this course seemed to synthesize it all, impressing upon us the weighty responsibility of becoming a future health provider. This piece, entitled “The Practice of My Art,” is a collage of illustrations I drew throughout the year reflecting on different courses, organ systems, or learning experiences from my first year of medical school.
What if I could see the emotions that flood my patient’s mind? What if I could know how much space anger, frustration, joy, sorrow, hope took up in their mind’s real estate?
Dead eschars are excised. / Skin grafts grow like flowers / Repotted for new life.
The pungent odor of formaldehyde permeates through the room and I can smell it through my mask and face shield. I am leaning over the body I am dissecting, trying to identify structures as the instructor appears before our tank, armed with a grading pen and a barrage of questions.
Grandpapa had a gift for storytelling. / Sitting on the two-legged stools at the end of the Hutong,
When we approached his room, Craig was wedged in the doorway, sitting on his walker angled towards the nurse’s station. It was the first time I had set foot in a hospital as a medical student; the task was to simply chat with a patient for about forty minutes. “Craig?” one of the nurses called out. “Yep! I am Craig, at least I was before I got in here!” he replied. Something about the enthusiasm in his voice appealed to me, so I sat down next to him and struck up a conversation.
One of the most impactful influences on my decision to become a doctor was meeting a patient with multiple sclerosis (MS). I was 19 years old and a hospital volunteer in Michigan. As I was replacing gloves, gowns and towels in my department, I entered the room of an elderly Eastern-European woman.
Soon after I began my clinical rotations in medical school, I started to see it. It was subtle. At first, I didn’t even notice it. It usually happens during hand-over, when the night team fills in the day team on overnight events, including any new admissions.
In this article, I hope to examine some causes of this discrepancy, compare and contrast the various prison systems across different countries, understand the shortcomings of America’s prison system in addressing these issues and shed light on how prison systems can provide better health care services.
While I maneuvered through my first block of medical school, I felt emboldened by how well my undergraduate studies and extracurriculars prepared me for the transition. With that being said, Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) snuck in on its Trojan horse and presented me with a very unexpected challenge.
At the start of my psychiatry rotation, I was most apprehensive about performing the “bread and butter” exam of the specialty: the psychiatric interview. I was not afraid of forgetting which questions to ask, but rather how to ask said questions.
Contributing Writer
Oregon Health and Science University
Jeffrey is a third year medical student at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon class of 2023. In 2014, he graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Science in nursing. He worked as a registered nurse from 2014 until 2019. He enjoys gardening, mushroom farming, and spending time with his pets. After graduating medical school, Jeffrey would like to pursue a career in emergency medicine and toxicology.
