Tag: compassion
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Healing beyond the sterile chamber
Brody FoglemanSpartanburg, South Carolina, United States A senior resident once shared with me: “Patients don’t heal in the hospital; they get sicker. Our goal is to stabilize, medically optimize, and discharge.” Though I was surprised by such a statement, it became truer the more patients I encountered as a medical student. A patient admitted, a…
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Not just for the sake of ourselves
Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The Fatal Wounding of Sir Philip Sidney is a painting that I have used often to teach close looking to medical and theological students. The painting is full of details: color, lines, and textures. Faces and body language serve as vessels for emotion and are abundant and finely detailed. It…
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Compassion in the emergency room
Raymond BellisStony Brook, New York, United States Yet another shift in the Emergency Department—between the frenzied rush of staff, the constant pinging of monitors, and the chaotic overhead announcements, I didn’t find the environment particularly conducive to healing. But as a dedicated student in my third year of medical school, I eagerly picked up a…
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Red Beard: A master clinician in nineteenth century Japan
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.”—Francis W. Peabody, M.D.1 Red Beard (or Akahige) is a film about an arrogant, inexperienced doctor who learns about caring and compassion from his chief, a…
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Compassion
Charles HalstedDavis, California, United States Formed and found in the human soul lies the wellspring of compassion.Seeing yourself in the other, the other in yourself is the essence of compassion. Selfless caring without condition for the unfortunate ones without voice,feeling the pain of another, accepting without judgment is compassion. Caring for someone in need or…
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Being our best selves: hidden in full view
James StollerPeter ReaAlan KolpCleveland, Ohio, United States We live in a paradox framed by a tension between age-old wisdom about excellence and our current state. The paradox is this: our behaviors and our priorities are often at odds with age-old truths about how we can be our best selves. This paradox—that these truths are widely…
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Ahab’s gift: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the meaning of pain
Xi ChenRochester, New York, United States In the summer months before my first year of medical school, I unfurled the pages of Moby Dick. Immersed in the novel’s adventurous spirit and Shakespearean prose, I followed the narrator from the piers of Nantucket into the Atlantic and waded through Captain Ahab’s quest for the legendary white…
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Burnout: Are we looking at it through the wrong lens?
Elizabeth CerceoCamden, New Jersey, United States 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, we are trained to identify a condition, make a diagnosis, and prescribe a treatment.…