"I grew from the experience – though I think it aged me 10 years!"
This is how a resident described a turning point with a specific patient when he recognized how burned out he was.
He was able to draw on resilience instead of the negative path that he was on.
Overcoming this challenge mirrored a previous major choice he made in which he diverted from his chosen residency specialty, obtained a graduate degree, and re-started his training in a new residency program.
He described the skills he developed in his previous specialty – the ability to "zoom in" and focus narrowly on specifics – as making him who he was, even as he now recognized that zooming out and seeing the whole patient and their context was more aligned with who he was.
Listener Poet Yvette Perry
Association of American Medical Colleges
April 2021
Re-set
I keep learning this lesson: moving
forward may require tracking-back,
walking the stone-strewn paths I already
traveled, still burdened with all the
weight of work
When back again at my journey’s start
I zoom out for the aerial view, see
more than one path before me, and now
choose the one with the sign marked
Who I Am
Wielding my tiny flashlight and
wearing a belt of brand new tools,
again I walk–
now with a lighter load,
now on a smoother road:
I changed my mind, I changed my heart, I
re-set my intention
This lesson keeps
teaching me: to
find my way forward
make my way back
She wanted to help people feel comfortable and transform the shame around colon issues. "I want to talk about things that matter, the things people don't want to discuss. I want to help them feel okay talking about it."
When we met, she was coming off a stretch of nine 14-hour shifts. She was tired but in good spirits.
She reflected on how her resilience was born from moments of shared mirth amid life's trying chapters.
“Life is complex and dirty, but digging in is important to me,” she said. “Maybe if more of us understood history, we could understand each other better.”
We are expected to research, contribute to scholarship, earn grants – all on our own time.
We are expected to research, contribute to scholarship, earn grants – all on our own time.
Every day, I try to see through the patient lens, and I ask: what can we do to change this broken system?
She was very proud of her daughter and has hopes for “a bright future that’s as pain free as possible”
“I’m trying to focus on doing little things to make people feel better during everything that’s going on in the world,” she told me.
“It’s hard to see others struggle,” she said. “How can I help with their struggle without struggling myself?”
"I'd tell her it's OK to be loud...it's OK to challenge and to bring all of you into these spaces where no one looks like you..."
“I'm continuously questioning: did I do it right?" she said. "I’ve always done a good amount of second-guessing, but I’m re-learning how to show up differently.”
“It’s weird,” she said. “This is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
"It changed me; It changed the way I look at life," said this woman about her profound experience during her pregnancy.
“It’s been more challenging than normal lately,” she said. “I’m only one person. It's a struggle for me to say no, but I can’t do everything that’s being asked of me right now.”
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
“I like feeling small,” he told me. “Nature has always made me feel small.” He described the sense of wonder that feeling gave him.
“I feel like I have decision fatigue,” she told me. It was normal for her to make many choices at work, but COVID had dramatically increased the number of medical decisions she had to make at home.
“I know ‘vibe’ is kind of a nonspecific term, but I think about people’s vibes all the time,” he said.“ Sometimes you come into a room and it’s just off.
This physician discussed being the only one in his practice network with expertise in patients with a specific type of chronic pain.
“Our constituents are uniquely affected by the pandemic,” they said. This poemee was an educational psychologist who spoke about how much they missed working in person with med students, healthcare staff, and medical educators.