Kacper Niburski is a medical student in the Class of 2021 at McGill University. He is also the CMAJ student humanities blog editor.
murphy’s sign
yellow on the horizon
with a dark more total than
fingers moving in small steps
and smaller spaces
an ambulance is in the distance
your breathe is on my neck
what is this gall
how do you hold me
with all your living
Arnav Agarwal is an Internal Medicine Resident (R1) at the University of Toronto. Check back the last Thursday of each month for a new featured piece as part of his series (Doc Talks: Reflections to Reality)!
Arnav Agarwal is an Internal Medicine Resident (R1) at the University of Toronto. Check back the last Thursday of each month for a new featured piece as part of his series (Doc Talks: Reflections to Reality)!
Pieces of a puzzle inherit meaning not by their individual qualities, but by being pieced together into context. Good medicine — and good healthcare — are similar: they rely on understanding patients as people, and clinical presentations as brush-strokes forming part of a bigger picture. ...continue reading
Shubham Shan is a medical student in the Class of 2019 at the University of Toronto
How to read a cleave poem:
Arnav Agarwal is an Internal Medicine Resident (R1) at the University of Toronto. Check back the last Thursday of each month for a new featured piece as part of his series (Doc Talks: Reflections to Reality)!
Once an elastic band is stretched beyond its limits, it is difficult for it to return it to its unstretched state. Burnout represents a similar phenomenon: an erosion of one’s sense of self and a reflection of emotional over-exhaustion, leading to disinvestment and depersonalization. Years of intensive training, long working hours, increased managerial responsibilities, resource limitations, emotionally-involved patient and family encounters, fear of limited job prospects and litigation, and mounting clinical and non-clinical responsibilities, among other demands: physicians and other health care professionals represent a highly vulnerable group susceptible to burnout, with some estimates suggesting close to 50% of physicians being affected. Evidence suggests that physicians experiencing burnout are more likely to make poor medical decisions, share more tenuous relationships with co-workers, experience more individual and personal relationship challenges, and suffer higher risks of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. Physician burnout has also been associated with differences in overall quality of care, system-level costs, and rates of staff turnover and absenteeism.
This piece focuses on the compromise some residents and physicians make in placing themselves second while dedicating themselves to the care of others, and the silence that some encounter while struggling with burnout. It is encouraging to observe that dialogue around burnout and mental health is growing at individual, institutional, and systemic levels over time. This piece is part of that conversation. ...continue reading
Matthew Lee is a medical student in the Class of 2019 at Dalhousie University
I was totally unsure. Meeting a patient who knows they are going to die... wouldn’t it be intrusive, at the end? A student coming into your life: asking questions, getting signatures, asking you to share your precious time. In the same position, I don’t know if I would say yes. That thought makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Checking in on the floor, with information hurriedly scribbled into the margins of a notebook. A brief run-in with her mother in the crowded room, then twenty minutes spent in the hallway — trying not to be obtrusive while staff hurry by. There are visitors every day, and I doubt I looked out of place.
In some ways, I chose to take on this project in order to become more comfortable with death. It’s something I have faced before, and it took years to move past my friend dying from lymphoma. He quickly stepped away to take a phone call at our convocation. It was a biopsy result. Nearly six months to the day and it was all over. It took nearly everything I had. ...continue reading
Noren Khamis is a Family Medicine Resident (R1) at the University of Toronto
Early morning: the student comes by in a daze
Disoriented in the hospital maze
He’s frantic and sweating, the hallways all crossed
But one look at me and he’s no longer lost
The happy father and toddler walk by
One look at me, and yikes, what a cry!
Dad lifts his daughter up from the ground
And smiles in relief when she calms down ...continue reading
Beatrice Preti is an Internal Medicine Resident (R2) at Queen's University
The list is long, but I know your name
Each day before, its spot was the same
Second from the top, the second room on the right
The one with three windows and a broken bathroom light
But today something’s different; the list I have’s bare
I looked for your name, but it wasn’t there
Something has happened, and, in my heart, I know
That though I fought to keep you here, you found a way to go ...continue reading
Arnav Agarwal is an Internal Medicine Resident (R1) at the University of Toronto. Check back the last Thursday of each month for a new featured piece as part of his series (Doc Talks: Reflections to Reality)!
"First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." — Harper Lee,To Kill a Mockingbird
This piece reflects a daughter’s internal struggle as she comes to terms with her mother’s suffering through delirium and terminal illness. Touching on the sensitive balance between seeking care and doing no harm, this piece provides an intimate perspective on the challenges many family members encounter in letting go of their loved ones during trying times of declining health, as well as on the difficulties involved in recognizing that ‘more’ is not always better — that, sometimes, less is more. ...continue reading
Sunjit Parmar is a medical student in the Class of 2019 at the University of British Columbia
Warmth as hostility in a cruel summer’s dream:
Surrounded by the thick, humid mid-summer air, I await the prickling breeze of late November.
I drift beneath the cool, dark shadows... a nearby cedar sways above.
Aware of the fiery weather, a sheath of saline smothering me, I mindlessly plunge into a slow, warm stream. Upset by the warmth of the swampy summer water, I catch sight of my reflection: a suddenly aged man. I look away. ...continue reading