Being sick takes work. There is the pain and exhaustion, the adaptation, the cognitive load required to keep moving forward when my body holds me back. There’s also the business of being a patient: sitting in waiting rooms, standing in line at the pharmacy, being on hold with the insurance company.
Read moreDoes one honor or diminish an elderly parent by insisting on the truth? A reflection by Davida Pines
Kristin Graziano’s “Contents Have Shifted” considers how best to respond to a parent’s dementia-inflected reality. “For years,” Graziano observes about her mother, “I felt compelled to refute her falsehoods. I felt that by correcting her, I could yank her back to The Truth, to the real world. When I did this, sharp words with resentful tones followed, leaving us both frustrated and silent.”
Read moreMoving into Compassion, One Small Moment at a Time by anesthesiologist Molly McCormick
I think about time a lot now. My days are ruled by schedules and cases and meetings, and I spend much of my day reacting to the pressures of the unrelenting sweep of the second hand as it moves around turning into minutes and hours, never slow enough for me to accomplish everything I need to do.
Read moreIt’s Happening to Me, Too: Reflections on Interconnectedness, Interdependence, and Independence in Caregiving Relationships by Leena Ambady
“Every thought begins with I. This is happening to him, I try to say,
not happening to me. But it is, too. This is my place to tell it.”
The above is an excerpt from Kristin Camitta Zimet’s “A Dialysis Diary,” (Intima, Fall 2023). In this beautiful essay, Camitta Zimet writes about her husband’s end-stage kidney disease, the initiation of dialysis, and the impact that his chronic condition and the treatment it required had both on her and her relationship.
Read moreCaring and the Challenges of Social Convention, by Jeffrey Millstein, MD
An internist reflects on his short story as well as a fellow physician’s personal essay and explores the complex issue of crossing implicit social boundaries in the clinician-patient relationship.
Read moreBefore and After: In Response to “The Face as an Organ of Identity” by California community doctor Katie Taylor
I work at a community clinic with patients who are homeless–there is the stigma of homelessness, and then there is the stigma of looking homeless.
Some patients of mine do not–or do not yet– appear unhoused. It is usually those who still have family that support them, who live in a car, who hold a job—running food for Doordash, picking for Amazon, sitting security—or who have not been homeless for so very long. But many of my patients do appear frankly homeless: a shuffling gait, a blanket draped around their shoulders, belongings pushed in a stroller, blackened teeth, leg wounds.
The Healing Power of Empathy: Does it Exist? Can it be Acquired?
In this reflection, a retired surgeon examines the research findings of evidence-based medicine to uncover whether empathy, in addition to the principles and practice of narrative medicine, can facilitate deeper healing.
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 moreOn "Feeling Blue" and Self Care: A reflection by neonatologist-poet Elizabeth Osmond
© Feeling Blue Amanda Hage Spring 2022 Intima
It is a challenging time to practice medicine. We are emerging from a global pandemic that is casting a long shadow. This has mingled with austerity for public service funding and a cost-of-living crisis. Members of many healthcare professions have been on strike.
Read moreCrossing the Line: The Power of Touch by Catherine Humikowski
A pediatric intensive care physician advocates for crossing the imaginary line and using the power of touch to comfort those in need.
Read moreThe Individual Nature of Care by Joanne Clarkson
A nurse examines a clinical encounter through her poetry and appreciates the individual nature of care.
Read moreOn Work-Worn Hands and Gestures of Love, a short essay by poet and educator, Joan Baranow
A writer and poet honors the memory of her mother by finding the parallels between her own work and the story of another mother and daughter.
Read moreThe Third Ear: Listening for Intergenerational Trauma
A psychiatrist uses her skills of close listening within the clinical encounter to uncover the enduring effects of intergenerational trauma.
Read moreOn Knowing
A nurse ponders the role of hope in the clinical encounter and whether the holy can be found within the realm of medicine.
Read moreOn Being Confined
A retired hematologist explores the importance of clinical communication and health literacy by close reading two pieces published in this journal.
Read moreOn Sinatra, Bach, and Daughters: The Power of True Joy in the Face of Illness
A medical student reflects on the loss of their father to a devastating neurodegenerative disease as well as the power that music can hold during the illness experience.
Read moreThe Importance of Providing Compassionate Palliative and End-of-Life Care
A writer reflects on her own mother’s experience with death and dying and argues for the greater recognition of palliative care in the clinical encounter.
Read moreLeave Work at Work
Which story is heard, and by whom? Which story do people want to hear, and why? A COVID nurse provides explanations as well as recommendations about storytelling.
Read moreThe Embodied Connection in Patient-Provider Interaction
A former PICU nurse examines the power of both embodiment and gaze in the clinical encounter.
Read moreStories Make Us Human by Krista Puttler
“Ms. Paul, I can’t give you any more pain medication, it isn’t time.”
Edith’s eyes were closed. She was in the single patient room again, the one that had an anteroom with an extra sink that connected to her room by a sliding glass door. The residents always made sure both sets of sliding doors were closed before talking about her.
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