Peter Lewis
About the artist:
Peter Lewis is a professor of family and community medicine and humanities at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. His professional interests include doctor-patient communication, medical humanities, interdiscplinary collaboration and peer-mentoring. He and his wife Jennifer (who is a much more talented photographer) are grateful for times and travels with family and friends, neighbors and colleagues–in particular, their sons Kyle and Tyler.
About the artwork:
“As a physician I strive to be mindful and aware; to have the eyes to see the patient as a person, as both an individual and as one connected to a family or a community; and to have the ears to hear a person’s narrative, joys and sorrows, hopes and expectations. In the clinical environment I recognize that I see and may perceive but a fraction of who the patient truly is and where he or she finds meaning. While at a conference in Amsterdam in 2014, I captured with my camera-phone this joy-filled image–this impression of a couple encircled by refreshing waters. Their identities and stories are not known to me but their water ballet–this pas de deux–encourages and inspires me as a person and physician. I can imagine the types of unbridled joys and freedoms that the people I encounter as patients may experience, seek or, perhaps sadly, have lost.”
Visuals editor:
Justin Sanders
