Clinical Curiosity and Compassion
The balance of maintaining a patient-focus within clinical learnings
Deep Cleanse
A clinical conversation with positive impact
When Breath Becomes Air
A doctor’s transition to becoming a patient
They Are the Brave
A deeply reflective analysis of patients’ vulnerability and hope within clinical care. Hard-won personal insight has integrated this tension in a simple, poignant and artful poem
Flowers
Exploring the intertwined role of clinical care and family support through flora
Dear Diary
Prose in diary form – composite fictional account. based on observations of patients in an oncology clinic
Happy Birthday Helen
Considering the shortened life of the author’s elder sister
Attention: This Building is Unsafe and Likely to Collapse
A daughter shares how her mother handled terminal lung disease both through writing poetry and publishing practical ideas to support family and friends through a cancer diagnosis
Loss
The unexpected emotional impact of a family doctor’s concern for a man whose wife died of cancer
How Am I?
Prose inspired by meeting a distraught, terminally-ill mother who had just given birth
CANCER?
A medical student’s mixed response to his mother’s suspected cancer diagnosis
The Future
An emergency hospitalization where the patient is unaware of gravity of her condition
Art in Medicine
The role of portraiture within healing.
Paint my Canvas
A student chooses to minutely absorb and process a deeply shared patient experience around terminal illness using poetry as method of learning from this privileged gift
An Excerpt From The Diary Of A Patient
Personal account of patient as undisclosed medic hearing her devastating diagnosis unwittingly revealed in clinical shorthand
False Hope
The complexities of diagnosis and prognosis following a sudden bereavement
Some Kind of Miracle
Narrative from the perspective of a child about her terminally-ill mother coming home from hospital for Xmas, then remaining in remission for several years
The Truth
After visiting a children’s cancer-ward in Malaysia – the author speculates about ‘the gateway between life and death’
Paranoia
Figures carrying ‘secret’ health issues
Life in the Glasshouse
A terminally ill patient bodily connected to various machinery processes being on the threshold between life and death
Beyond Appearances
A student’s observation of a surgeon establishing clinical boundaries
New Glasses
Tough recognition of a grandparent’s emotional abuse, and perspectives around death and dying
The Die Hard Smoker
An elderly smoker survives against the odds, defiant in his addiction to tobacco
Why do I feel so guilty about this?
Medical student on a ward with a dying man – feeling unable to comfort him
Bodies
A powerful poem around survival inspired by a prisoner of war in Burma who now finds himself dying from cancer as was the case for his recently and abruptly deceased wife