“Compassion”
“Compassion” / A pale moon hangs above / The workroom clock reads six, but / Is it day or night?
Art & Poetry in Medicine
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
University of Rochester/Strong Memorial Hospital
Caroline Hsu is an internal medicine resident physician at University of Rochester/Strong Memorial Hospital.
Scar
His mother asks whether or not there will be a scar. I tell her yes. We’ll do our best to make it small, but there will be a scar.
MICU Poem
Easter Sunday, intern year / MICU long-call consult resident / 41-year-old female
To Preside
Shrouded in a plastic blanket / Raising the temperature of your / Frail limbs and famished core
The Masters of Patchwork
Come one, come all, to the emergency room / It’s one a.m., and the rashes are in bloom
Unseen Song
The below poem was written during a weekend away in Indianapolis. I watched an apparently homeless older gentleman sitting outside a coffee shop for several minutes while I read. It was a generous reminder that our patients should be seen in their environment and not only in our own, with fluorescent lights and temperature control. We all have different backgrounds and life circumstances and drastically effect our behaviors and choices.
Emergency Medicine: 14 Haikus
A specialty known for its brevity, emergency medicine can be appropriately summed up in haiku form. This is a collection of haikus about life in the emergency department.
Trach and PEG
While there is always an intrinsic desire to root for patient recovery and ultimate survival, I struggled immensely with the decision to pursue invasive measures. This is a poem that helped depict my feelings for this patient encounter.
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Ohio State University Werner Medical Center
Rohan M. Modi, MD is a resident physician at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Inspired by the writings of Atul Gawande, Rohan is interested in understanding the illness experience from the patient's perspective and centering medical care around the patient's values and priorities. He plans to incorporate these sentiments in his future career in Gastroenterology and clinical research.