Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: gratitude

  • Aunty Felicia

    Boma Somiari Port Harcourt, Nigeria   Photo by Liza Summer from Pexels I can’t stand blood. So my goal was to stay as far as I could from hospitals and all they come with. But then change came to me when Aunty Felicia came to my village with a missionary organization that chose medicine and…

  • Best friends for never

    Ariya Mobaraki Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   Three people contemplate the cadaver of Saint Petronilla. Etching by James Basire, 1764, after Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino… Credit: Wellcome Collection.  (CC BY 4.0) I stand looking over you, Wishing I could turn back time. Wondering what wisdom you would give me, Back in your prime.  …

  • Burnout: Are we looking at it through the wrong lens?

    Elizabeth Cerceo Camden, New Jersey, United States   The Exhausted Ragpicker. Jean François Raffaëlli. 1880. The Art Institute of Chicago. The epidemic of burnout seems to afflict ever more populations as it insidiously creeps into the workplace of everyone from nurses to teachers, from medical students to seasoned clinicians, from Amazon to Apple. As physicians,…

  • Notre Dame and gratitude

    Elizabeth Cerceo Camden, New Jersey, United States   Notre Dame de Paris, brandend. April 15, 2019. Photograph by Milliped on Wikimedia. On April 15, 2019, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned. This event highlighted the integral nature of art and beauty in our culture. We often take for granted the beauty that surrounds us and…

  • Gifts of gratitude

    Henry Bair Palo Alto, California, United States   Christ sits at the bedside of Jairus’s sickening daughter. Etching after G.C. von. Max. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. “It’s for you,” the old man said when his niece tried to hand Dr. Alba the large wrapped package. It was a gesture I was familiar with, though Dr.…

  • She was even in love with you

    Stewart Massad St. Louis, Missouri, USA    Cognitive Dissonance: Gratitude in oncology Francis Delisle was coming out of Bard’s TrueValue Hardware with ant bait in a paper bag when he saw Marty Van Etten coming up Main Street. Marty’s wife Anne had died at winter’s end, only forty-seven, from glioblastoma, after surgery in Baltimore, radiation…

  • Saying thank you

    Robert Folberg Rochester, Michigan, USA   From the commencement address to graduates of the University of Illinois-Chicago College of Medicine on May 6, 2016   It seems to me that members of the medical profession should practice expressing gratitude as often as possible. After all, gratitude may be an effective antidote to arrogance: it is…