Medical Humanities Commons^™

Balance, Nafisa Choudhury

be Still

As the COVID-19 pandemic grew into a frightening monster to be reckoned with, medical professionals throughout the world had to address a question within themselves: where does the balance lie between our duty to heal and our personal obligations for our individual health and safety?

As personal protective equipment shortages, long work hours, and hospital overflow wreaked havoc on the medical systems nationwide, doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel were plunged into uncertainty and were almost wholly unsupported in this ethical dilemma. Our duty to treat and our obligation to treat the community around us does not often directly conflict …

Seesaws And Spheres, Samantha Sostorecz

be Still

No abstract provided.

Above Water, Vania Arboleda

be Still

After a trial and error period, I understood that balance is not about absolute control but of continuous inspiration.

ABOVE WATER represents my balancing act during my first year in medical school while going through the Covid-19 pandemic. It has been hard not to lose pieces of myself in these tumultuous times, especially when there is so much to learn and so little time. I turned to my loved ones to bring me light and joy. To be those shades of color that I had lost. I painted ABOVE WATER as a reminder of how I got here and why …

Eustress, Becky Li

be Still

Medical school proved to be one of the most challenging times for me to find balance. This past year in clinical rotations is when I especially found myself teetering to an higher degree of stress as I found myself overthinking and questioning my competence. Now having overcome the peak of this challenge, this composition serves as a snapshot and reflection of one of the most challenging but rewarding times.

Teamwork In Medicine, Ananna Kazi

be Still

This photograph demonstrates a group of medical students participating in a team building activity of stabilizing a balance board. A few of the students had their eyes closed while other helped them navigate their ways. This activity prompted the students to work as a team to complete the activity successfully and efficiently. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, this fun activity not only taught the students the importance of teamwork to have a balance at work, but also gave an opportunity to be emotionally balanced, away from work and studies.

A Balance Of Compassion: Fighting Inequality And Creating Access In Medicine, Ananna Kazi

be Still

This article describes my passion for using compassion to fight inequality and creating access in medicine.

Balance And Baking, Idarabasi E. Akpan

be Still

The piece is a personal perspective of how engaging in hobbies can help one find balance and peace. It is about discovering my love for baking and how baking has shaped my life as a person and a medical student. Baking puts me in a somewhat meditative state that grounds me and makes me feel connected to the world at large and to my needs in particular.

Balancing Medical School With Life, Katie Lamar

be Still

A poem about the trials of work life balance in medical school.

The Tight Rope Walk Of A Medical Student, Bhargavi Madhu

be Still

When I think of Balance, I thought of my life as a medical student. It is similar to a tight rope walk where we are walking the line of medical school, aspiring to become physicians while trying to balance school, a family life, hobbies and eventual work life. It is important to find the right balance in order to not face burn out, something that is seen all too often amongst medical professionals.

Restoring Balance, Daniel R. Villanueva Toby

be Still

As a medical student who has received half of their education during the COVID-19 pandemic, I wanted to portray the internal struggle of medical providers in trying to care for the sick and disabled. A great deal is expected of doctors in this day and age. That stress of expectations versus the innate desire to help others led me to write this poem.

Pulling Out Of Afghanistan, Suzanne Riskin

be Still

This piece was written on a casual day at work when there was not any particular event happening. I realized how much of an impact a decision made so far away from home could have on my personal growth as a medical educator.

Balance, In All Things, Justin S. Straughan

be Still

This poem is a vent for the inherent frustration felt from trying to find a career in and bridge the transition between politics and medicine. It reflects a stubborn determination to not give in to critics' "never-enough-ism" while also trying to be open to improvement and not give in to pride nor cynicism.

Emergency Medicine Shift Factors Causing The Most Stress Among Emergency Medicine Residents, Mohamad Moussa, Kristen Hayden, Chia-Hao Shih, Sadik Khuder, Zayd Safadi, Connor Parsell

Journal of Wellness

Introduction: Past studies demonstrate that stress and anxiety affect emergency medicine physicians, but the causal factors identified are usually from sources outside the work shift. We attempt to show the relationship between intrinsic factors of a work shift and anxiety perceived by residents, while also examining differing gender responses.

Methods: In 2018, a cross-sectional survey of emergency medicine residents in the United States was distributed anonymously through the Emergency Medicine Residents Association. The survey consisted of demographic questions, novel questions identifying intrinsic factors, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item (GAD-7) scale. Spearman correlation, independent t-test, and multivariate analysis of variance …

Wellness Review 2021, Part 1, Martin Huecker, Brian A. Ferguson, Jacob Shreffler

Journal of Wellness

Introduction: This article presents a curated selection of the wellness literature from January to June of 2021. JWellness editors offer a summary of recent publications within the wellness domain to seek an understanding of both burnout prevention and, more importantly, thriving in the medical profession.

Methods: For the interval of Jan 1 to June 30, 2021, a UofL librarian queried PubMed for empirical research studies, review articles, and editorials related to healthcare professional wellness. Excluding papers related to COVID-19 (due to extensive prior coverage) and editorials/commentaries, the editors narrowed to 43 articles (systematic reviews, meta-analyses, general reviews, and clinical trials) …

Disparities In Covid-19 Rates Among Various Demographics And Lack Of Racial Representation In Medical Texts, Diangelo Gonzalez

Celebration of Learning

The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, China in December of 2019, has impacted nations all over the globe. Given the health disparities which existed within the United States prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this pandemic continued to pose a significant challenge to the health of the public. The aims of this research study were twofold: (1) to analyze the incidence rates of COVID-19 among different racial and ethnic groups within the United States and (2) to describe the occurrence of diversity within medical texts. Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated health disparities within the United States. Understanding …

The Current, Scott K. Heysell

Journal of Wellness

No abstract provided.

Use Of Telehealth In Home-Based End-Of-Life Care For Children In Rural Regions, Meaghann S. Weaver

Theses & Dissertations

A national shortage in pediatric-trained providers results in certain geographies, primarily rural, where children with special needs are not able to access home-based care at their end-of-life. Advances in technology have made the use of telemedicine a potential modality for palliative care subspecialty clinicians to provide clinical care and support for adult-trained hospice teams. This dissertation utilizes four approaches to consider telehealth as an unexplored opportunity in care delivery: (1) a systematic review of telehealth measures and instruments to select the Technology Acceptance Model as a validated metric of telehealth acceptance uniquely now applied to pediatric care; (b) a pilot …

An Empirical Comparative Study On The Two Methods Of Eliciting Singers’ Emotions In Singing: Self-Imagination And Vr Training, Jin Zhang, Ziming Xu, Yueying Zhou, Pengpai Wang, Ping Fu, Xijia Xu, Daoqiang Zhang

Library Scholarship

Emotional singing can affect vocal performance and the audience’s engagement. Chinese universities use traditional training techniques for teaching theoretical and applied knowledge. Self-imagination is the predominant training method for emotional singing. Recently, virtual reality (VR) technologies have been applied in several fields for training purposes. In this empirical comparative study, a VR training task was implemented to elicit emotions from singers and further assist them with improving their emotional singing performance. The VR training method was compared against the traditional self-imagination method. By conducting a two-stage experiment, the two methods were compared in terms of emotions’ elicitation and emotional singing …

A Patient’S Narrative Of Engaging Hiv Care: Lessons Learned To Harness Resources And Improve Access To Care, David Lessard, Serge Vicente, Patrick Keeler, Bertrand Lebouché

Patient Experience Journal

In Canada and the USA, about 30% of people with HIV are uninsured or not covered by government-subsidized health insurance. This paper presents a patient’s narrative of his experience being diagnosed with HIV and accessing care in the midst of his process of immigrating to and studying in Canada. The narrative explores how Vincent Croft (pseudonym) has coped with the chronicity of the infection and its associated social stigma, and the temporary solutions he found to access treatment. Engaging with healthcare providers, researchers, and other people living with HIV has allowed Croft to share his experience, including the barriers he …

Beneficial Effects Of The 30-Minute Door-To-Needle Time Standard For Alteplase Administration, Suja S Rajan, Marquita Decker-Palmer, Jessica Wise, Thanh Dao, Cindy Salem, Sean I Savitz

Faculty and Staff Publications

Objective: The American Heart Association recently raised the bar on the timely treatment of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) with intravenous alteplase. Our study looks at the effectiveness of this new standard, by examining the effect of varying door-to-needle times of alteplase initiation on the clinical, quality of care, and efficiency of care outcomes.

Methods: This retrospective case-control study examined 752 AIS patients treated with intravenous alteplase in a large academic health system during 2015-2018, and compared their outcomes after treatment within 30, 45, and 60 min of arrival. The outcomes compared were: (1) clinical - discharge and 90-day modified Rankin …