Remembering My Patients…
Remembering My Patients… Read More »
“I Did Some Exhaling the Other Day, and I Thought of You”
As a family physician for over forty years, I’ve dedicated enormous time and effort to ending tobacco use through a non-finger-wagging approach to patients in the clinic and the hospital, as well as through the use of humor and parody to students in middle schools and high schools.
“I Did Some Exhaling the Other Day, and I Thought of You” Read More »
The Patient Voice
“My sister was havin’ too much stress on the job; and she got real sick, had to be put in the hospital.
And when she got home, she started tryin’ to stay well, even used that nicotine gum to stop smoking.
But when she went back, they called her in and told her she’s usin’ too much sick time…
and guess who started smokin’ again?”
“He doesn’t know anything now about the coins…
I give him his albums, and he go like this, page after page…after two minutes, he look up and stare.
He sit on the couch and he looks into the nothing…
so I took his hand and we both sat on the couch and we look at the nothing…
he remember nothing, his social security number he knew perfect,
now he forgets his name, his mother’s name.”
“Upstairs got robbed. See, she’s got diamonds on her fingers, cause this is her second marriage…
I’ll talk fast, cause I know you’re busy.”
Three generations
Alan Blum
About the artist:
Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. Many of his sketches have appeared in Pulse. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.
About the artwork:
“This was in a small room at a children’s hospital over twenty-five years ago. As with nearly all of my sketches, I made it on the spur of the moment–struck by the young patient, his mother and his grandmother huddled in silence, caring for one another. It’s my only drawing of three generations.“
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
The Mother and Babe
Alan Blum
About the artist:
Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. Many of his sketches have appeared in Pulse. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.
About the artwork:
“From my first year of medical school until the last day of my family-medicine residency, I kept a visual diary, filling numerous notebooks with clinical vignettes, stories patients shared with me, scraps of overheard dialogue and pasted-in sketches of my patients in ballpoint pen on index cards or prescription pads with pharmaceutical advertisements. This is one of the sketches from more than seventy binders I have filled throughout my career.”
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
The Mother and Babe Read More »
Data Art 2
Alan Blum
About the contributor:
Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. Many of his sketches have appeared in Pulse. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.
About the artwork:
“For the past five years, on the first Thursday evening of each month, I have hosted an Art of Medicine Rounds for medical students, residents and faculty, at which I often distribute a story or poem from Pulse or else one of JAMA’s ‘Art and Medicine’ or ‘A Piece of My Mind’ essays.
“Above and beyond being a devoted reader of JAMA, I am especially drawn to the
Data Art
Alan Blum
About the contributor:
Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. Many of his sketches have appeared in Pulse. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.
About the artwork:
“For the past five years, on the first Thursday evening of each month, I have hosted an Art of Medicine Rounds for medical students, residents and faculty, at which I often distribute a story or poem from Pulse or else one of JAMA’s ‘Art and Medicine’ or ‘A Piece of My Mind’ essays.
“Above and beyond being a devoted reader of JAMA,
Casa Juan Diego Portraits
Alan Blum
About the artist:
Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. Many of his sketches have appeared in Pulse. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.
About the artwork:
Alan Blum shared the experience of being in the clinic with his associate physician, Marsha Holleman. She had the following to say about that time and about his sketches.
“Casa Juan Diego is a Catholic Worker house of hospitality, serving new arrivals to the US and Houston, mostly from Latin America. Inspired by Dorothy
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