To Sleep, Perchance to Die Read More »
Holland M. Kaplan ~
I’m sitting in the ICU team room, staring at the computer, trying to look like I’m writing a note. But my head is pounding.
As an internal-medicine resident doing my first month of residency, I’ve found the ICU of the bustling county hospital a jarring place to start my training. Although I’d anticipated the clinical challenge of caring for very ill ICU patients, I was unprepared for the emotional burden of having to deliver devastating, life-altering news to them and to their family members.
Faint yells emerge from Room 7. They have an almost rhythmic quality: “Ahhh!”…(three seconds)…”Ahhh!”…(three seconds)…”Ahhh!”
It’s Ms. Burton. I’ve just gotten back from checking on her, but I plod back again.
A Series of Unfortunate Events Read More »
Josephine Ensign
About the artist:
Josephine Ensign is a professor of nursing and an adjunct professor in the School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. She authored the medical memoir Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net.
About the artwork:
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
Laurice Gilbert ~
4th January 1986 / opened the journal and wrote the first entry:
swapped completely from mercury to digital thermometer
basal body temperature: a colorful set of graphs that each invests
3 months with footnotes, asterisks and inexplicable numbers
Reading: Birth Without Violence / The Paper Midwife
A Guide to Responsible Home Birth
21st January / passed my Distance Learning exam in Horticulture
Human Biology next perhaps / forgot to take my temperature
Ingrid Forsberg ~
It’s 10:00 am on a Monday in June. I’m the nurse practitioner on duty in a convenience care clinic housed in a corner drugstore in urban Chicago.
Sunlight is pouring through the huge storefront windows when my first patient of the day walks in. He’s in his late twenties, muscular, crew-cut. He looks like someone who’s used to being in charge.
Right now, though, he looks anxious. He’s pale, with dark circles under his eyes. His eyes scan the store, looking for something.
I know immediately that he’s looking for me.
Sarah C. Bauer
About the artist:
Sarah C. Bauer, a developmental pediatrician in Chicago, explores and reflects on relationships between patients, families and physicians through narrative, poetry and visual arts.
About the artwork:
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
A few years ago, after retiring from a long career as a psychologist, and when I was deep into an MFA program in writing, I wrote a poem exploring the reasons, past and present, for my intermittent, middle-of-the-night insomnia.
Nobody Is Watching Read More »
Dan Yashinsky ~
In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, if a blizzard keeps you in your neighbor’s house, they say you’ve been “storm-stayed.” I first learned this term from a storyteller in the Maritimes, and it’s come to hold special meaning for me and those I work with.
I am the storyteller-in-residence at a research and teaching hospital for the elderly, in Toronto. My work here, known as “storycare,” reflects the institution’s philosophy that literature and storytelling are essential to health care.
Every week, I work with clinicians and therapists to bring storycare to patients in the palliative-care, rehab and long-term-care units. Twice weekly, I head to the fourth floor to co-lead storytelling circles for the geriatric psychiatry patients.
Riding Out the Storm Read More »
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