Medical students - Hektoen International

Learning about children

August 12, 2020

Canon Brodar Miami, Florida, United States The Infant Hercules, ca. 1785–89. Sir Joshua Reynolds, British. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Surdna Fund. I began my first clinical rotation excited but fearful. Medical students are taught about pediatric pathology and developmental milestones, but nothing about working with children and their families. I had heard […]

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

June 1, 2020

J.T.H. Connor St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada Health Humanities in Postgraduate Medical Education cover. Source Review of Allan D. Peterkin and Anna Skorzewska, eds., Health Humanities in Postgraduate Medical Education: A Handbook to the Heart of Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018) The backbone of this innovative and informative collection is comprised of eleven essays […]

Unmasked

April 6, 2020

Kelley Zhao Stony Brook, New York, United States Illustration by Sherry Xiao. Provided by the artist. 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?” […]

A house call

June 27, 2019

Martin Duke Mystic, Connecticut, United States A doctor visiting a sick woman, and taking her pulse. Many years ago, in the mid 1980s, when I was still in clinical practice, I made a house call accompanied by a second year medical student who was coming to my office one day a week as part […]

A quiet night

May 16, 2019

Henry Bair Palo Alto, California, United States University College Hospital, London: the outpatients’ waiting room and dispensary. Wood engraving, 1872. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. It was the end of the week, the middle of the night, and the beginning of my ER shift. All was quiet, and I was studying at the nurses’ station, […]

Between frames: liminality and the emergence of self

March 25, 2019

Jane Persons Iowa City, Iowa, United States Human hippocampus, 2X magnification, Luxol fast blue stain. Photo credit: Karra Jones, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Department of Pathology, Iowa City, Iowa, United States The development of compassion, along with wisdom, skill, and communication, is pivotally important to the practice of medicine.1 Perhaps even more importantly, development […]

John Keats – One whose name was writ in water

December 10, 2018

John Keats, one of the great poets of all times, was born near Moorgate in London in 1795. His father was an inn stable keeper (an ostler), who one night fell off a horse and fatally fractured his skull, leaving his family somewhat impecunious.1 John, sibling of four, was far from a model pupil in […]

Against anatomy lab

August 1, 2018

Harriet Squier Haslett, Michigan, United States Jocular students posing over mangled corpse Make no mistake, dissecting a human cadaver is revolting. When we medical students opened the cadaver bag, we were instructed to keep the head covered to prevent it from drying out. It is difficult to dissect tissues that are completely dry. We […]

Empathy for medical students

April 28, 2017

David Jeffrey Edinburgh, United Kingdom Medical students check blood glucose on a patient. On a windy corner of Drummond Street, not far from Rutherford’s pub in Edinburgh, there is a small bronze plaque with these words: “And when I remembered all that I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford’s in the rain […]

Observing the human condition: letters and case reports

January 29, 2017

Thomas J. Papadimos Columbus, Ohio, United States From time to time medical students and residents ask me to mentor them in regard to the exploration of a research topic. My retort is that I do not consider myself a researcher, even though I engage in scholarly endeavors. I tell them that I am a […]