Submission Medium: written

Reflective MedEd

The “About” section of this blog explains its purpose as follows: “Reflective MedEd is dedicated to reflective practice in medical education and care of the person. We publish contributions that offer insight and illumination into the experience of educating the next generation of physicians. We welcome the thoughts of educators, patients, and all who foster awareness of the human dimension of doctoring and develop advocates for the just and equitable treatment of all patients.” Especially welcome are submissions that address “social justice and a concern for marginalized and vulnerable populations, the role of faith in medical practice, and ethical standards of decision making.” Reflective MedEd is supported by the Ralph P. Leischner, Jr., MD, Department of Medical Education at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

Blog posts include both personal narratives and reflective essays from a variety of experiences and perspectives. For example: “How COVID Impacted my First Patient and Patient Death Experience,” “What I have Learned About Trust from Black Women,” and “The Wolf: How skeptical should we be of our patients?”

When the Uber Driver Asks, Do You Have Any Kids?

Prompted by the Uber driver’s small talk, this disabled author reflects on how an alternative self, who is not disabled, might answer–or would not have to answer, because her life would be different. Telling the story of the alternative self and life is a means of revealing some of the ways her Stargardt disease (a rare genetic eye condition) has affected the author. The story speaks to non-apparent disabilities, cultural assumptions (about women, about able-bodied-ness), stigma, and disability.

The Weight of the Soul

“The Weight of the Soul” is a poem written by physician and poet Jack Coulehan. It refers to an experiment run in 1901 to measure the weight of the human soul by weighing a body before and after death to conclude that the departed soul weighed 21 grams. Coulehan concludes that it is humbling to hold less than an ounce of soul, and he hopes that it is enough in the end. This poem prompts reflection on the meaning of life and death, what can be known from scientific data and what cannot.

Heart Sounds

In this 5 minute read, a first year medical student discusses treating a patient whose family had to overcome indifference in the ER in order for him to receive treatment. Additionally, the medical student illustrates managing the unknown when assisting a patient with an advanced and nuanced condition. The student decides that the best treatment they can provide is listening to the family’s complaints, fears, and happy moments in order to encourage them to keep believing in this patient’s future.

The story touches on cardiology as a specialty and would benefit pre-medical undergraduates as well as professional students recently starting their health profession. It highlights the importance, and difficulty, of active listening.

Pulse- Voices from the Heart of Medicine

Pulse- Voices from the Heart of Medicine is an online publication that features stories, poems, haikus, and visual works from various voices within the healthcare field. Stories come from health care providers in various roles and from patients and family members. For example, “Cultivation Also Starts With C” is a poem that uses the invasive, difficult to remove plant Japanese knotweed as a metaphor for cancer and “Another GSW” details a young doctor’s encounter with a patient who had extensive injuries from a single bullet wound, and how the experience made her consider the ramifications of gun violence in America.

Length of items ranges from 40 to 400 words for written works. Each month’s issue is on a theme (recent examples included Alone, Coming Undone, Unsung Heros) and the “New Voices” section features “stories by those whose faces and perspectives are underrepresented in media and in the health professions.”

The website offers several ways to search. For example, one can click through content by year, all the way from 2023 to 2016. When you click on a story, you can also see a lengthy list of “popular tags” that you can click on to search by subject matter. The “visual works” tab includes an option to see a slideshow of submissions, as does the “haikus” tab, which could be helpful for more efficient browsing. Other notable features are that the stories and poems tabs display a phrase from each submission as an attention-getting preview. Similarly, the “more voices” tab displays a themed photograph with each submission.

Medicina narrativa

Overview of narrative medicine: characteristics of a narrative, benefits for health professionals, basis in biopsychosocial model of medical care. Useful introduction to a course in health narratives taught in Spanish; upper intermediate reading level, 4 pps

Un último acto de amabilidad íntima

Michelle Friedman describes providing home care for her estranged younger brother as he dies from advanced pancreatic cancer. She touches on difficult topics of conversation, her brother’s depression, and grappling with death and religion.

An English language translation of this essay is available under the title, “A last act of intimate kindness.”

Did a famous doctor’s Covid shot make his cancer worse?

Beyond – and more important than – the medical details, this article raises questions about the power of individual stories, in this instance case studies, of what might be fluke happenings or might be patterns of rare but significant side effects of a vaccine. Deep reflection on what happened when the teller was not just a patient but a scientist, one of several authors on a peer-reviewed article reporting findings in a journal, and how his trajectory would have been lost in a randomized clinical trial but might be quite significant if put together with two or three others with similar progressions. Also significant that his radiologist and co-author was his brother; not everyone has such a keen listener to their health narrative, nor would most people be able to tell them in such detailed and credible ways.

Useful for discussions of scientific knowing vs storytelling in e.g. a rhetoric or composition class; science writing (author reflects at the end on her hesitation about writing the story at all, given potential misuses and misstatements of the facts she presents); power of stories; doctors as patients.

Promises Like Dolls

“Promises Like Dolls” is a very short story (123 words) about the experience of multiple miscarriages. The story refers to various objects (dolls, books, flowers, t-shirts, stuffed animals) as a way of reflecting on expectations of motherhood (her own and those of others and of society) and on the grief of miscarriage. It also represents the limits of social support for miscarriage.

The story is short enough to be read together in class, both as a reflection on how the experience of medical events is shaped by cultural norms and social experiences and as a prompt for discussing how the author utilizes specific imagery and description to convey (and imply) complex emotions in a very short work.

Fae Kayarian: Physician in Training, Poet in Progress

Fae Kayarian is a poet and medical student who began as a scribe at Harvard Medical School. She has shared her experiences through poetry in the form of an autobiography titled “Journals of a Visitor” and several stand-alone poems. Her website contains eight poems ranging in topics in medicine from her point of view as a bystander and now a student.

Generally useful for close reading of poetry. Two poems – “The Color Blue” and “It’s been six years” could interest families of patients experiencing loss and dementia. Others would be beneficial for teaching physicians and other health professionals in mentor positions. Her poetry would serve as a reminder of what it’s like to be a student and the impact that medical educators have on the future of medicine as mentors.