I am at the point in medical school that I can forget how strange a place the hospital is. Most days, I pre-round around 5am and I leave as the pink and gold of sunset reflects in the windows of the inpatient tower. I no longer smell the antiseptic that pervades the air. I write my notes oblivious to the announcements of “code blue” or “stroke team activation” playing over the intercom. When I walk through the hallways, there is purpose in my strides. The core clinical rotations that every medical student undergoes (family medicine, surgery, pediatrics, etc.) are a time for exploration and the forging of identity. We learn: This is how doctors act and react.
Read moreLeaning Close: "No more interventions. No more transfusions." A reflection on mortality and morbidity rounds by pediatrician-writer Laura Johnsrude
When I read “All Tuned Up” by Albert Howard Carter III (Spring 2021 Intima), I remembered a pediatric intensive care unit patient from my own 1980’s residency experience. In Carter’s poem, a medical resident presents a case during mortality and morbidity rounds. The resident is moved to tears as he tells the gathered audience about the death of a patient he knew well. A senior doctor “gently” offers context and says, “Maybe he was just tired.”
Mercifully, I’ve muffled memories from some of the deaths during my residency training in the pediatric intensive care unit. But I remember a slight girl of about sixteen with silky, wavy hair, lying in a metal-frame bed parallel to the wall against the window, in silhouette.
Read moreOn Subtraction: Understanding What's Lost and Gained in Clinical Encounters by Abby Wheeler
I recognized right away a kinship with Bessie Liu’s “Variations on the Negative Space Before Healing” (Fall 2023) and its use of subtraction to create new meaning; The poem by Liu, a third-year medical student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. very much feels like a sister to my poem, At the Doctor’s Office, I Check, Yes, I Have Experienced the Following: Sudden Weight Loss (Fall 2023).
Read moreThe Luxury of Walking Away: An MS4 meditates on time, isolation and the comforts of home
A medical student contemplates her roles as a physician-in-training and learns to appreciate the privilege she possesses—unlike her patients—in walking away from the clinical space.
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