While the city sleeps tucked beneath a dark embrace my mind hears yours. Talk. I am listening. Though nothing but a frail soul beating in basement of cadavers answers. I know you are here. In the heartbeat of silence I imagine a house, a car,
Sitting on the high granite ledge overlooking the fog as it drifted onto the valley floor, obscuring the golden headlights as they weaved on hidden roads, carrying hidden lives, I finally felt a semblance of peace. I had come here to escape the tragedy that
For you I would spend the next four years of moonlight squinting my eyes into the blinding luminescence of an Anatomy atlas, dancing with the skeletons in my Netter’s notecard stack until they become like you, everlasting striations of my latissimus dorsi; and for you
After my recent month long affair with the kidneys, I decided to turn my affection into an ode of farewell, in the style of Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” O Kidneys! my Kidneys! our fearful trip is done, Old heart has given in at last,
The last king raised the funds to build the hospital. Projects of this scale is difficult to achieve without an expansive capital or a groundswell of public support, and bonds were sold in order to finance the construction of the medical center of Ethiopia, in
“Did you notice what you were doing there with your hands? You were going like this,” he said, wringing his hands into knots. “I could see how uncomfortable you were and that made me uncomfortable. Does that make sense?” “Of course,” I said, “I would
In front of an audience of first-year medical students, a teenage boy with one eye sat with his mother. They told a story of triumph, even miracle: brushes with death, an eye removed, cancer overcome. This young man has become a star baseball player despite
We are excited to announce that since our launch in April 2015, we have expanded the Doctors Who Create staff. We are a team of dedicated volunteers: attendings, residents, medical students, post-bac pre-meds, and undergraduates, all passionate about the DWC mission. Read our team page to learn
Medical decision-making near the end of life has been complicated in recent years by advents in the biomedical sciences, which have enabled clinicians to provide advanced life sustaining treatment for patients. What evidence shows, however, is that patients with serious illness are seldom discussing their
Ezra Klein, writer and founder of Vox Media, interviews “surgeon, writer, researcher, dilettante” Atul Gawande for his podcast The Ezra Klein Show on Panoply Media. (Ezra can’t contain his utter excitement at doing this interview, which he says he has wanted to do “for a
Why Doctors Write: Finding Humanity in Medicine is an upcoming documentary film about the intersection of medicine and literature, created by Emmy award-winning producer/director Ken Browne. Among many themes, the film documents the tradition and motivation of physician-writers, how art is joining science to become a part of modern
As an architect, I joined the profession because of a desire to improve the environments in which people live and work. This ambition is accentuated in the area of hospital design where medical planners have the opportunity to design spaces in which people experience the
I pushed her wheelchair from the waiting room of the emergency department into the space where her body would be inspected by a machine, and then I brought her back. That day had made little time for her stories. Her body was already large enough.
Last month, I participated in my first medicine-related “Story Slam,” at the AMSA (American Medical Student Association) convention in Washington, D.C. I had to speak for about 5 minutes, without notes and without sounding like a robot, about my path to choosing medicine as a career.
I wanted to become an artist long before I wanted to become a doctor. While my classmates were going through the fireman, astronaut or paleontologist stage (okay, I also had an astronaut stage), I wanted to work for Disney and draw the next Lion King.
In medical school, we study every nook and cranny in the human body- what it looks like, how it works, and what happens when things go wrong. Many days, studying resorts to stone cold memorization- which cranial nerves innervate the tongue? What cardiac anomalies comprise the Tetralogy of
Life hacking has become immensely popular in the past decade. Entrepreneurs, artists, and academics have all written about the tips and tricks they use to work smarter. Some people do this so that they can travel the world full-time. Some want to explore a personal
Doctors, medical professionals and students are uniquely positioned to make major contributions to the field of policy making. I think the medical community often feels isolated from policy because it seems abstract. It is something done by politicians, lawyers and policy wonks on Capitol Hill.
Growing up, I always struggled with math and science. My teachers encouraged me to pursue my more natural talents, which were in the arts and humanities. I never thought I could make it in medical school with my hard science deficiencies and my unstructured, creative
Going to the Transom Traveling Workshop in June 2015 was a life-changing experience for me. It was a weeklong workshop on how to produce a radio story from start to finish. It was incredible to devote an entire week to a creative pursuit I had