Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: medical school

  • The pandemic: A medical student’s perspective

    Saira Elizabeth AlexHouston, Texas, United States As medical students, we eagerly await the start of clinical rotations since the first day of school; we anticipate building memorable connections with our colleagues and patients. This is an account of my days as a medical student, three months into clinical rotations, during the COVID-19 pandemic. I write…

  • Reflections on time long gone by

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States The author of this delightful book, Dr. John Raffensperger, is a retired surgeon who entered medical school in 1949. His book presents a stark contrast between how medicine was practiced then and how it is now. It highlights the many changes, mostly good but some bad, that have taken…

  • 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…

  • Tracing wisps of hair

    Miriam RosenPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States My mother was diagnosed with cancer when I was fourteen. For the next nine years, she lived her life with elegance and seemed to do it with ease. She continued her psychiatry practice, only gradually reducing the number of patients she saw. She read the New York Times cover to…

  • Review of: Health Humanities in Postgraduate Medical Education: A Handbook to the Heart of Medicine

    J.T.H. ConnorSt. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada The backbone of this innovative and informative collection is comprised of eleven essays that address the spectrum of the arts and humanities and how they relate to postgraduate medical education. Most of the authors and their experiences are grounded in Canadian medical schools, but the literature they draw from is…

  • Partial eclipse of the heart

    Perry DinardoCleveland Heights, Ohio, United States In early August 2017, the nation was buzzing about an upcoming total solar eclipse. I had been immersed in news about the eclipse for weeks, and decided it would be absolutely necessary for me to watch from the “Zone of Totality.” Within this zone, a diagonal path across the…

  • Regalia

    Nancy L. HagoodCharleston, South Carolina, United States My medical school graduation regalia has hung in my closet for two years. It will never be worn. In spring 2019, I was a fourth-year medical student, planning to graduate in May and move 500 miles north to work as an intern at my first-choice residency program. After…

  • Unmasked

    Kelley ZhaoStony Brook, New York, United States The lecture hall was freezing on the first day of medical school orientation. The room was buzzing with students meeting one another, and the familiar phrases floated around me as I took my seat. “Where are you from?” “Where did you go for college?” Half of the students…

  • What it’s about

    Wesley ChouBoston, Massachusetts At coffee-flecked boothsAnd down corridors, wendingA way through the staccato chatter,We guzzle down the details: Oh let me tell you,One fisherman to another,Of fingers turned tassel by a firecracker,Soiled plastic and muffled screams leakingOut a hermetic room that anImplacable observer lords over. We’re in on a dirty game,As if our lives have…

  • From here

    Rasa RafieColorado, United States In college, we were the top of our class, the winners of scholarships and awards, the leaders of campus organizations. We were the ones our classmates looked up to and the names our teachers used as examples. We worked hard and those efforts delivered results—good grades, MCAT scores, and finally medical…