Medical Humanities Commons^™

We’Re All On This Spaceship Earth, Nancy Si

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

The photo features the geodesic sphere at Epcot, Disney World in Orlando, FL. Inside the dome, there was an iconic ride called “Spaceship Earth”, which has since been shut down for refurbishment. This photo was taken November 2019, approximately 6 months before it was shut down. Much like how the ride emphasized the progress that human civilization has made in the last several hundred years and hopes to make in years to come, the current pandemic has shown us how far we have come in the medicine and other STEM fields. We hope only to do better and be better …

Still Learning: Covid Through The Eyes Of A Medical Student, Alexis Strahan

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

As a first-year medical student when the COVID-19 pandemic found a foothold, I felt an overwhelming amount of emotions that accompanied the pandemic’s spread. Fear, although a reasonable choice, was not the first emotion that I experienced. In fact, it was a general feeling of paralysis. I had not six months prior taken an oath to commit my career and life to the service of the public’s health care needs, yet I could provide little more than the textbook knowledge of biochemistry or genetics from my first semester of learning. My hands felt unarmed and unskilled for the fight. What …

Excerpt From: {Being About To Ascend}, Steven B. Katz

Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine

This poem constitutes a different take on the theme of this special issue of Survive and Thrive—“Diversity and Community in Narrative Medicine and the Medical Humanities.” An excerpt from a longer poem under development, the poem here is a story of human frailty and limitation at the end of Anthropocene, the end of the age of humans on Earth—perhaps sometime in the not-too-distant future. This poem is thus a “speculative” or “science fiction” story about what happens to a species indigenous and totally adapted to and dependent on the Earth, and which cannot survive anywhere else, must. Facing extinction, the …

Black Raspberries, Ashley E. Francis

Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine

N/A

Community, Diversity And Reconciliation In Remote Vietnamese Villages, Edward B. Tick

Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine

Post-War Diversity and Reconciliation in Viet Nam

This photo-essay presents the author's twenty years of experience leading war-trauma healing and reconciliation journeys to Viet Nam with a focus on reconciliation between American and Vietnamese veterans and the transcendence of diversity through immersion in community and atonement practices.

Diversity And Community: Photography, Arne Hoel

Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine

N/A

The Crossroads Of Wellness And Second Victim Syndrome: Identifying Factors That Alter The Pathway Of Caregiver Recovery Following An Unanticipated Adverse Patient Outcome, Kimia Zarabian, A. Katharine Hindle, Ivy Benjenk, Anita Vincent, Jamil M. Kazma, Benjamin Shambon, Raymond Pla, Eric Heinz

Journal of Wellness

Introduction: Second Victim Syndrome (SVS) describes the phenomenon in which a caregiver experiences a traumatic psychological and emotional response to an adverse patient event or medical error. Using quantitative survey analysis, we aim to better understand the personal factors that affect SVS development and recovery.

Methods: Caregivers at a small urban academic medical center who had experienced an adverse patient event in the past six months were invited to take part in this institution-wide, voluntary, quantitative, cross-sectional study. Three surveys were administered; the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory (HRLSI) was used as a surrogate to measure stressful life events. The …

Covid-19 With Congruent Affect, Mitchell Thomas

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

Music is a vehicle of capturing an individual’s experiences: a new beginning, a broken heart, complete joy, and even catharsis. Before deciding to embark on my path in medicine, music was my interest. Creating music is my therapeutic method of relieving stress, providing a productive outlet when coping with my stressors, and allowing me to focus on becoming a better student doctor. It has carried me through tough times and continues to do so. This instrumental song I wrote represents how I felt as a second-year medical student going through the COVID-19 pandemic; from being isolated in a state away …

Gut Reactions And Clinical Decisions, Joseph Friedli Md

Clinical Research in Practice: The Journal of Team Hippocrates

The author reflects on a patient encounter where the diagnosis was made by gut reaction.

Clinical Decision Science: Proof Of Concept, James Peter Meza Md, Phd, Nicholus Yee Md, Bennett Riddering Md, Ali Nasrallah Md, Urtė Zableckas Ms, Mbbs

Clinical Research in Practice: The Journal of Team Hippocrates

Clinical decision science, a newly identified area of scholarship, describes how clinical research is used for a patient, within the context of their unique social conditions. We hypothesize that physicians use sociocultural context as an important input to their decision making. We performed a prospective, randomized, double-blind mixed methods study. Family medicine faculty and residents at a community hospital family medicine residency were included in the study. After academic journal club discussing a primary research paper, physicians were asked if they would prescribe medication for a patient who was similar to the subjects in a research paper. However, social and …

Microbial Load Of Touch Screen Mobile Phones Used By University Students And Healthcare Staff, Abdelraouf Elmanama

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of our lives. Though they offer plenty of advantages, they are prolific breeding grounds for infectious pathogens in communities and hospitals. The present study seeks to identify the counts and types of bacteria contaminating touch screen mobile phones (TSMP) used by students of the Islamic University-Gaza (IUG) and healthcare workers (HCWs) at Al-Shifa Hospital. It also tries to investigate the antimicrobial resistance profiles. A cross-sectional study was conducted from October 2013 to April 2014. Two hundred and fifty swab samples were collected: 100 IUG female students, 100 IUG male students and 50 from …

Heart Grows Fonder, Jasmine Saini

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

This painting was inspired by one patient’s mindfulness practice that he developed to cope with depression of a recent loved one’s death. Similar to my family of green thumbs, this patient found catharsis in cultivating his late wife’s garden of fruits and vegetables after her death. Through mental health practices such as meditation and exercise, a person has a chance to process and heal from difficult circumstances.

A History Of #Bcsm And Insights For Patient-Centered Online Interaction And Engagement, Matthew S. Katz, Alicia C. Staley, Deanna J. Attai

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Participation in cancer support groups can provide a sense of community and may better prepare patients for interactions with their health care team. Online interactions may overcome some barriers to in-person support group participation. #BCSM (breast cancer social media), the first cancer support community established on Twitter, was founded in 2011 by two breast cancer survivors. The aims of this study are to describe the growth and changes in this community and to discuss future directions and lessons that may apply to other online support communities.

Methods: Symplur Signals was used to obtain all #BCSM Twitter data from January …

Optimizing Wellness In Academic Emergency Medicine, Kristen E. Nordenholz, Al'ai Alvarez, Michelle D. Lall, Christine Stehman, Cindy C. Bitter, Emily L. Hirsh, Rita Manfredi, Rosanna D. Sikora, Dave W. Lu, Leon D. Sanchez, Matthew L. Wong, Steven Bird, Andra L. Blomkalns

Journal of Wellness

Introduction

Academic Emergency Physicians (EPs) face additional unique challenges in optimizing wellness compared to community EPs.

Objective

Our objective was to explore specific individual and systems challenges that academic EPs encounter that affect their wellbeing and professional fulfillment in emergency medicine (EM).

Methods

An expert group of academic EPs convened in 2019 at the annual meeting of the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine to investigate the overall causes of burnout in healthcare providers, the effects of burnout on the healthcare system, specific causes of burnout in EM, and the distinct challenges facing academic emergency physicians.

Results

We outline specific causes …

Contents Ije-Volume 1 (1), October 2020, Cynthia Brunold-Conesa

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Morita Therapy According To Morita: Dwelling In The Tension Between Hardy And Fragile Life, Peg Levine

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

At the turn of the last century, Shōma Morita, MD (1874-1938), observed the ways thriving habitats revitalize and sustain humans, other mammals, birds, insects, fish, trees, fungi, and other life. Compatibly, Morita progressed his theory of peripheral consciousness (mushojūshin), which informed his therapeutic ecological habitat and methods. In Morita’s era, scholars and clinicians mulled over diverse hypotheses on consciousness and how consciousness theories (or lack of a theory) influence therapy and places of delivery. Largely by the 1980s, phenomenological inquiry was displaced (if not discredited) by advocates and funders of cognitive science. Therein, consciousness was reframed as …

Native American Perspectives: From The Red Road In Recovery, James Pete

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

CULTURE AND TRADITIONS are a major part of my Red Road in Recovery. I've been involved in Native Art (used to call it Arts and Crafts) from the time I was 8 years old and going on 55 years! I am still learning, in many aspects. But, when I am creating Native Art....there is this place of peacefulness, serenity, a connection to the Higher Power (Gichi Manidoo), those who traveled to the Spirit World, and many others. This is from an Anishinaabe (Chippewa or Ojibwa) aspect.

The Ideological Scalpel: Physician Perpetrators, Medicalized Killing And The Nazi Biocracy, Matthew D. Fuller

History in the Making

With the conclusion of the Nuremburg Doctor’s trials in August 1947, the role of German physicians in the concentration camps of Europe became a widely discussed and researched topic in the historiography of the Holocaust. Like many other perpetrators indicted by the Allies following the Second World War, German physicians claimed to have been swept up in the mass indoctrination of the National Socialist movement and had ultimately become powerless cogs within the Nazi totalitarian regime. While this claim may be true in some cases, the historiography of German physicians-turned-killers reveals different sources of motivation which allowed doctors in the …

Every Day Is Worth Celebrating, Sundeep Gidugu

be Still

Sundeep Gidugu enjoys writing about his life experiences and opinions from the mindset of a medical and public health student.

Celebration Of A Milestone, Komal M. Patel

be Still

A first-year osteopathic medical student, Harsh Patel, has dreamed of starting medical school for as long as he can remember. This is a photo of him at his White Coat ceremony at NSU.

Medicine In Spirituality, Ashesh Soni, Krunal Patel

be Still

Modern day medicine places a major emphasis on appreciating spirituality. A patient’s cultural and religious beliefs are integral when practicing medicine in order to provide the most humanistic care possible to patients. This photograph comes to show the exact opposite, medicine in spirituality. Medicine is an integral part of a medical professional's life and it serves as a major defining characteristic of an individual. Though viewed as objective and subjective, medicine and spirituality are all one.

Strawberry Festival - Plant City, 2019, Komal M. Patel, Harsh M. Patel

be Still

Strawberry Festival

Thank You, Krunal Patel

be Still

The mission of medicine is to promote health and save lives. Unfortunately, one’s actions in the medical field may sometimes never be enough to revitalize a patient. From my experience, the magnitude of the loss of a patient's life will never be fully appreciated until witnessed first-hand. This poem serves to illuminate one of the sad truths about medicine and provides inspiration for medical professionals to continue to promote humanity and appreciate the true value of life.

Change, Destin, Fl, Komal M. Patel

be Still

No abstract provided.

A Celebration, Angel Mauricio Marquez

be Still

What began as an image became a story. Angel Mauricio Marquez pictured hands raised into the air, basking in the moment and enjoying the little victories. Angel wanted to talk about a celebration yet not portray it as an isolated event. He didn't want to show happiness in a bubble, He wanted the truth behind it. He wanted to talk about the things that we fight the hardest for and the moments we often believed we were inches from quitting but then didn't. For Angel, these are the reasons we celebrate.

A Celebration Of Progress, Reena Patel

be Still

No abstract provided.

Saturn V - Kennedy Space Center, Komal M. Patel, Harsh M. Patel

be Still

Saturn V is the rocket that took the first men to the moon.

Finding Will In Despair, Dhruti Hirani

be Still

This essay is about the author's emotional journey as she discovered what celebration means to her.

Girl On Piano Keys, Bhargavi Madhu

be Still

Celebration is the loudest and greatest form of expressing honor and appreciation. The best way to show love and appreciation for life is through celebration! Girl on the Piano Keys was a painting I gifted to a friend on her birthday. She spent that day at a hospital recovering from an episode of sickle cell anemia. Despite the suffering she was undergoing due to the disease, she would always treat everyday like it was her birthday.

Celebration Of Pride, Bryce Sebade

be Still

No abstract provided.