Humanities in Medicine The Humanities as a Tool Continued

were able to conjure more empathy for others and enlarge their appreciation for what it means to experience hurt and disease. Another strategy is contemplating the arts. While standing in front of a piece of art, we can try and understand the artist who painted it, we listen to a song and endeavor to feel what the artist went through to conjure up the lyrics, we read a new book and attempt to understand the character’s decisions, or we take an instant to understand why a patient may be nervous going into a procedure. This may be the first chisel in the walls we have built in our minds. Perhaps we may even go further to take up a new hobby, and as we catalyze the new experiences, we connect deeper to those whose own humanities encouraged us to develop ourselves further. Practicing these experiences, and wrestling with our ideas around them, may quite possibly be the practice that Moyle and colleagues found to be so helpful. My challenge to those perusing this commentary is to pull our minds out of the medical and patient care

Embracing the Good, the Bad, and the Weird

Megan Hansen, MD

boxes we have constructed for ourselves. We may have the knowledge, we may know the differential diagnoses, and we undeniably know how to tangibly care for patients; however, to sit and soak up what we may learn from our patients, to absorb the beauty of a piece of art from the artist’s perspective, or to sit ourselves on the exam table and try to feel what it is a patient feels when they receive a terminal diagnosis – this is to live. This is to be human, to experience the humanities around us and expand our worlds a little more. Not just for the patients we encounter, but for ourselves, our families, and our short existence on this rotating orb. +

References

1. Moyle, W., Barnard, A., & Turner, C. (1995). The humanities and nursing: Using popular literature as a means of understanding human experience. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 21(5), 960–964. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.1995.21050960.x

Idecided to become a doctor to tell stories. When I tell people this, they are understandably confused. Writers tell stories. Editors adjust them. Even lawyers know how to spin a tale. What, they ask me, is the connection between practicing medicine and storytelling?

I tell these people any number of things. I tell them that the first thing we learn in Patient History Taking 101 is to prompt a patient with, “Tell me your story,” and that there is immense power in showing a patient that they are in the driver’s seat. I tell them that, in How to be a Third Year Medical Student 101, we learn how to craft a narrative to present patients to our attendings, and that the words have profound impacts on patient care. I even tell them that, in How to Fight Burnout 101, we learn about the importance of writing as both a creative outlet and a mode of advocacy. What I do not tell them, what I have just begun to understand, however, is the way patients’ stories have shaped my own.

It’s strange, this career we have chosen. We are with patients for some of the best and some of the worst and some of the weirdest days of their lives, and we often have no choice but to absorb all of the good and the bad and the weird. Before I started medical school, I thought that I had a relatively strong sense of self—or at least, as strong a sense of self as a 22-year-old fresh-out-of-college, faints-at-the-sight-of-blood, newly-minted medical student can have. As I reflect on my years here, however, I am struck by how much I have been molded by the patients who have come into my life. They have changed my story.

I was with a 22-year-old patient when he found out he had CNS lymphoma, a complication of uncontrolled HIV. I sat with him while the doctors explained his chemotherapy options, keeping a hand on his shoulder while they broke the news that he would likely have less than a year to live. Just an hour before, we had been swapping Netflix recommendations and looking at pictures of his (adorable) one-year-old son. I absorbed the news with him that he would, in all likelihood, not live long enough to see his son’s second birthday. He passed away three months later, and I had a front row seat to his loved ones’ profound grief. These moments changed my story.

I was part of a clinic visit for a 42-year-old woman who had tried for years to get pregnant. She and her husband had gone through several rounds of in-vitro fertilization with two miscarriages but no successful births. They had resigned themselves to the fact that they would never have a child and had tried to make their lives as rich as possible—they adopted a mutt, went on long vacations, and took up gardening. The patient came in for an OB/Gyn office visit because she had missed a period. Assuming she was starting

Embracing