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July Intern–Taking Off My New White Coat

Heustein Sy July 6, 2012 1 Comment

Heustein Sy

I became a doctor of internal medicine in my home country, the Philippines, in 2005. The following year, I immigrated to the United States. In order to practice medicine here, I must complete one more journey–a three-year medical residency in the U.S.

My first week at the hospital has been a hectic blur–one task right after another. I’ve been existing on minimal amounts of sleep, food and social contact and maximum amounts of coffee.

Inside my head, though, this week has also been all about me. How lucky I was to have been picked for this coveted residency in this highly regarded hospital! How can I regain my rusty diagnostic skills? How do I look in my new white lab coat?

Rushing here and

Stepping Into Power, Shedding Your White Coat: Donald Berwick’s Graduation Address

Donald Berwick May 4, 2012 2 Comments

Donald Berwick

Editor’s Note: Donald Berwick, recent Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama Administration, and a founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, gave this speech at his daughter’s graduation from Yale Medical School on May 24, 2010.

Dean Alpern, Faculty, Families, Friends and Honored Graduates…

I don’t have words enough to express my gratitude for the chance to speak with you on your special day. It would be a pleasure and honor at any graduation ceremony. But, I have to tell you, to be up here in this role in the presence of my own daughter on the day that she becomes a doctor is a joy I wouldn’t dare have dreamed up. I hope that each of

The Silent Treatment

Frances Smalkowski March 2, 2012 1 Comment

Frances Smalkowski

Last year, while enjoying a two-week tour of the cultural capitals of China, I was amazed by how at home I felt. Searching my memory for the reasons behind this unexpected state of mind, I suddenly remembered Mr. Loy.

We met more than forty years ago. I was in my third year as a nursing student, doing a semester-long rotation in a large psychiatric hospital. Each student was assigned a patient for the semester, and Mr. Loy was mine.

We were expected to forge a therapeutic relationship with our patients. This was a tall order; most of our patients were diagnosed with some form of persistent schizophrenia, and few spoke in any coherent fashion, if they spoke at all.

Mr. Loy was no

Witnessing Consent for an Autopsy

Patty Bertheaud Summerhays December 2, 2011 No Comments

Patty Bertheaud Summerhays

“They just cut the abdomen like an operation, look in and sew him up. No one will know.”

I know the inside story–the body parts,
the heart, brain, liver, lungs,
kidney, spleen, bowel, and bladder
sliced on a cutting board
like loaves of bread.
The coroner donning a butcher’s apron
splattered with blood from the last
scrape of blade over bone,
slipping off the scalp like a mask.
The eyes stopping him
like the end of sentences until
he doesn’t feel the frown of brow–
anger as he drills to its roots.

Emotions leaving both men
with a grasp of brain.

A slice of brain placed in formaldehyde
jiggles like a thought trying to collect its thoughts.

Every organ shredded and a

First, Do No Harm

Alison Block November 3, 2011 3 Comments

Alison Block

It’s one of my earliest memories: I’m wrestling with my brother, and I’m losing, because I’m five and he’s seven, and he’s bigger and stronger than I am. So I bite him, hard.

Instantly I know I’ve crossed some sort of line, and I employ my most primitive defense mechanism, shouting out, “He bit me! Jon bit me!” I feel shame, because I am old enough to know it is wrong to hurt people–and to lie.

Some years later, I am accepted to medical school. I go to the first ceremony of my medical career–the one where I get my short white coat–and I take a modernized version of the Hippocratic Oath. I will try to do the best I can for my

Stigmata

Kevin Koo October 14, 2011 No Comments

I started my third year of medical school as a surgery clerk.

With this eight-week clerkship came a flood of conflicting advice from older, wiser peers: “Ask a lot of questions, but speak only when spoken to.” “Offer to help, but stay out of the way.” “Be friendly and likeable, but not too friendly–or too likeable.” For the medical student, such is the mystique of the OR.

Three weeks into my general surgery rotation, I was helping my senior resident to see patients in the clinic and evaluate them for surgery. She grabbed the first chart off the day’s pile, knocked on the exam-room door and turned the handle, glancing at the chart before saying, “Hello, Mister–”

“Tran,” the patient finished.

The End of Nice

Rosalind Kaplan September 23, 2011 No Comments

“Mouse bite, one year ago” read the Chief Complaint entry on the chart I picked up from the “nonurgent” pile.

I was a second-year medical resident, on an eight-week stint in the Temple University Hospital emergency room. It was 3:50 am, the beginning of the end of the night shift. All hell could still break loose before my shift ended, but for now we were in a lull, and the less serious cases got our attention.

Hospital Corners

Eileen Valinoti August 12, 2011 1 Comment

Eileen Valinoti

“And now, as we finish up, we’ll need to put our blankets away. I want you to fold them like this,” announced my yoga teacher–a bit sternly, I thought. With swift, deft hands, she began to demonstrate. Something in the tone of her voice and the sharp jut of her chin brought me back to Miss Coyle…

Miss Mary Coyle RN was the nursing arts instructor in my first year of training, more than fifty years ago. She taught our group of thirty–twenty-seven eager eighteen-year-old women and three young nuns–the basic nursing skills: how to give a bed bath; administer an injection; prepare hot and cold compresses, etc.

Twice a week, my classmates and I filed into her classroom, which was set up

The Irony of Being a Student

Cole Sterling July 8, 2011 1 Comment

Cole Sterling

True difficulty lies not
           In school, or staying involved,
           Or scoring well on tests.
Time and dedication are mandatory.
Everyone can distinguish black from white,
And everyone can sculpt something from clay.
           But being able to paint the empty spaces with color,
           Fill the cracks with laughter and passion and spirit–
           Such an art is easily forgotten,
           Or easily ignored.
Rhodopsin alone could suffice for reading resumes,
So why waste the time developing a genuine heart?

True difficulty lies
           In learning when to slow down–
           When to surrender yourself to life’s passions and wonders,
           When to paint or skydive or even just breathe.
           When to enjoy whatever you have at this very moment.
True difficulty

On the Bottom Rung

Jordanna Platt July 1, 2011 No Comments

I was in my third year of medical school, and the initial week of my first-ever hospital clerkship had passed without incident. I showed up on time, did what I was told, stepped on no toes and followed my patients as well as I could.

At the close of that week, however, my intern pulled me aside to ask, “Remember learning how to put an IV in a mannequin during the workshop earlier today? Well, there’s a patient in radiology, waiting for a CT scan. The tech can’t flush the IV, and I need you to do it. If you can’t, put in a new one.”

Tech? Flush? I meditated on my intern’s words and realized that this would be my first unsupervised procedure.

A Passage in India

Justin Sanders June 24, 2011 No Comments

Justin Sanders

“It’s cooler this morning,” I said to Seema, as we left the hospital grounds en route to our home visits.

It was a bright and bustling morning in Trivandrum, the capital of India’s southwesternmost state, Kerala. A third-year resident in family medicine, I had come here to work with the staff of an Indian nonprofit devoted to advancing palliative care services across India. Seema was a young, newly qualified junior doctor who had only recently joined the organization. We were traveling with five others–our driver, two nurses and two nursing trainees–into the mountains east of Trivandrum for the day.

“We don’t really speak about the weather like you do,” Seema gently chided. “In the West you spend lots of time talking about the

Little Lady

Samyukta Mullangi June 3, 2011 No Comments

Samyukta Mullangi

Growing up, I was the one thought to be the most squeamish about medicine–the needles, the knives, the musty smell of alcohol swabs and the rusty stench of blood. Whenever my mother, an ob/gyn, talked on the phone with her patients about menstruation, cramps and bloating, I’d plug my ears and wish for death by embarrassment. Once, standing in line for a routine TB test, I had a friend pull up a chair for me “in case you faint.”

So my entire family thought it hilarious when I decided to go to medical school.

“You know that residents practice stitches on each other, don’t you?” my cousin teased.

“Consider real estate instead,” my grandmother advised.

In deference to her, I actually did go

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: medical training

July Intern–Taking Off My New White Coat

Stepping Into Power, Shedding Your White Coat: Donald Berwick’s Graduation Address

The Silent Treatment

Witnessing Consent for an Autopsy

First, Do No Harm

Stigmata

The End of Nice

Hospital Corners

The Irony of Being a Student

On the Bottom Rung

A Passage in India

Little Lady

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: medical training

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