We are a group of artists, scientists, and physicians who use our traditional dances to perform stories of healthcare inequity. We are activists who believe that diversity in healthcare stories should be represented by diverse women through diverse traditional dances, empowering unique women while reminding the medical community about the shared goal of improving the human condition equitably.
Exploring ways to teach nonverbal communication in medical training can prove to be beneficial to physicians in the ICU. One way to teach non-verbal, body-based communication is through the language of the body itself — dance.
In my last installment, I mentioned I would like to write about my process of getting into a residency program in the United States. As soon as I promised this, I remembered the number of steps involved, so please forgive me if I forget to mention something. The path has substantially changed since COVID and differs greatly by individual circumstance. What made the whole process so confusing was having to create multiple accounts and profiles for multiple websites; the next step was often unclear until I called the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) and explicitly asked for instructions.
There was a dark, empty space. / Stillness, / Where there should have been movement.
“A lot of the men in my unit started getting sick and never got better. And we just didn’t know. I mean, all I want is to help build a group big enough that we might finally understand more about what’s happening to us.”
Your mom gets tetanus (Tdap) / before you’re born, / Plus COVID and flu / are the norm.
Alina and I would like to take the opportunity to introduce ourselves as the new editors-in-chief of in-House, the online peer-reviewed publication for residents and fellows.
It’s only 7:15 a.m.? I can finish folding my clothes before I have to leave for clinic, I thought to myself. Though the day was young, I had already been quite productive — I started the laundry, made myself breakfast, picked up around my room, and even found time to journal briefly about the day before. Surely I could check one more thing off my to-do list.
A few months have passed since I wrote my last column article, so now it’s time to get back into it. What has happened in the meantime? Well, I had baby #2, which meant I was lucky enough to take seven weeks of maternity leave from residency.
When was it that the newest woke thing to do was to ask for pronouns? In the queer communities in which I have been a member, it has been fairly common parlance to do so — but in regular life, I can’t place when it happened.
Let’s start with a very brief introduction: Hello! My name is Aline, and I am an international medical graduate (IMG) from Germany. I used to work in Germany in internal medicine, where I have completed four out of five years of training. I would like to share my experiences, thoughts, and later also some of the processes and steps that got me here over the course of this new column.
During my medical school journey at the University of Maryland, I created this photography series as an introspective representation of my experiences and to portray some of the unseen challenges and realities of medical training that, for example, are not seen on “medfluencer’s” pages — some feelings, experiences, and stories I wish I would have known prior to embarking on this career path.
My husband and I were pregnant with a child / Then we found out something wild. / I am a carrier of SMA / And this affects me in almost no way.
Resident Physician Contributing Author
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Holly Ingram is currently a pediatric resident at Wake Forest SOM in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2016, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in biology with minors in chemistry and anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She obtained her MPH from East Carolina University, and in 2022 graduated from Brody SOM with her MD. In her free time, Holly enjoys playing soccer, visiting waterfalls, and spending time with her daughter and husband.
