Letter From Your 2023-2024 Editors-in-Chief
We are very excited to commence the 2023-2024 academic year with you all! As the years go on, medicine and medical education, inevitably, continue to evolve.
Tag: medical humanities
Contributing Writer and Editor in Chief
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Jennifer is a fourth-year medical student at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, New Jersey class of 2024. In 2020, she graduated from Brandeis University with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and biology. When not studying medicine, she enjoys skiing, baking, and spending time with friends and family. Additional academic interests include medical education, narrative medicine, and bioethics. Upon graduation, Jennifer hopes to pursue general surgery residency.
Detectives in Disguise
When I was growing up, I used to love a particular series of video games called Trauma Center. In 2010, they released a version called Trauma Team where you got to play as various medical specialists, one of whom was simply considered a “Diagnostician.” Dr. Gabriel Cunningham’s “cases” were some of the most challenging because you were presented with an array of symptoms, imaging, and lab work and started ruling in or ruling out diagnoses until you got the right answer.
No. 17A
My attention swung back and forth between my mom, my screen and the pairs of eyes periodically peering into the hospital room. I focused on the next question on my screen. Another patient had expired as if they were a carton of milk left too long in the fridge.
Medical Writing as the Future History of Medicine, by Will Jaffee, DO
In my high school years, I had an English teacher, Mr. Moon, who once remarked that his dream would be to “write a paper” about a certain book we were reading, and publish it somewhere. “Write a paper”? Was he kidding? In his free time, he was going to write?
The Interpretation of Cultures
During my Step 1 dedicated study period, I remember looking at these visual comparisons of an early version of First Aid and the most recent edition and feeling righteous indignation bubble up inside me. The former was thin and worn and tattered while the latter was thick, hefty, solid. Hundreds of pages longer, the newest edition felt impenetrable and impossible to commit to memory, expanding yearly with new minutiae to scrutinize.
A Clinical Outing
The hospital room is / fair, square, sterile — / by its vapid / medical posters / and lusterless hospital tools.
The Worth of the Humanities
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.
COVID-19: An Opportunity for Self-Introspection, and a New Hobby
2020 was a tough year for all of us (and 2021, and 2022…), but it brought me closer to the medical humanities. The pandemic was the reason that I began to write.
Medical Humanities: A Pathway to Patient-Centered Care
To fully capture the breadth of medical humanities is simply not possible. In fact, it is all too easy for the medical community to lack an appreciation for all of the ways that the humanities not only complement, but enhance medicine. Medicine — a field so biological and chemical — is often associated with far more rigidity than where the humanities permits the mind to go.
The Significance of Artistic Observation in Medical Education
Studies have shown that physicians with exposure and background in the humanities are more empathetic, ethical, expressive and even healthier. Recently, medical school curricula across the country have begun to emphasize communication, teamwork, problem solving and humanistic care, as the dichotomous view of the sciences as a separate entity from art and literature is becoming obsolete.
To Hope, Intrepid
On a search for / assurance, / I was sat across / the Intrepid
How Art History Made Me a Better Clinician
I often joke about how worthless my art history studies were, but I never mean it. The truth is that my training in the humanities, while being unconventional for medicine, has prepared me to be a better physician and clinician.
Contributing Writer
Trinity School of Medicine
Bennett is a fourth year medical student at Trinity School of Medicine. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in psychology. He enjoys writing and spending time with his wife and two sons. Bennett is the author of "Dark and Bright: Poetry and Prose." His poetry and articles have appeared in Intuition, Chiasm, Poet's Choice, HEAL, America Media, and KevinMD.
