Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: medical student

  • History repeated: Child abuse in the United States

    Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, United States Q: Did you see any place for this child to sleep in?A: No, Sir, except in one corner. The child told me she slept up in one corner of the room under the window.Q: Did she show you where she slept?A: No, Sir.Q: Did she state what she slept on?A:…

  • Wounding words

    Charlotte GrinbergCambridge, Massachusetts, USA In college, I majored in anthropology. I was interested in understanding the political, social, legal, and economic forces that influence behavior. As language is inherently related to consciousness and culture, its study was central to my learning. In my medical anthropology course, for example, we spent hours discussing the linguistic difference…

  • Scars

    Morgan AlexanderDayton, Ohio, United States “I see you’ve got some scars here,” the doctor said, gesturing to two faint, thin lines that ran down both sides of the patient’s neck. “What’s that about?” The patient in the room with us was covered in scars across his neck and abdomen. Hesitantly, he confessed that the scars…

  • A very interesting case

    Anjiya SulaimanKarachi, Pakistan By my fourth year of medical school I had learned to distill patients into a pure clinical form. Individual characteristics are routinely and expertly tweezed and condensed into an intricate framework of pathology, pharmacology, and medical jargon: we call them “cases.” I met S during my first week of an inpatient pediatric…

  • Comics as a means of observation and reflection

    Rose GlennersterBrighton, United Kingdom Comics have long been used as a way of attacking cultural and political hierarchy, as has the art of caricature.1,2 They can also be used as a way to explore and understand the link between the medical profession and the rest of society.3 My comic is not intended to be a…

  • The benefit of literature to a medical student

    Martin ConwillUnited Kingdom In a letter to Benjamin Bailey in 1817, John Keats, who only one year prior was a medical student himself, wrote: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination – what the imagination sees as beauty must be truth.”1 This proclamation can be…

  • Feto-nosophobia

    Bryan SiskSt. Louis, Missouri, United States Never underestimate a medical student’s capacity for worry. Whether anxious about an upcoming exam or beginning a new rotation with a curmudgeonly attending, no one makes it through medical school without having to battle these existential butterflies. I found this to be especially true while I was on a…

  • Black man, white coat

    Yeji LeeToronto, Canada There is a fine line between prejudice and experience, and it is a line that grows all the more important for someone who is a doctor. In his memoir, Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine, Dr. Damon Tweedy ushers his readers through his years in…