D epartment of M edicine
Con ne c ti ng T e c h n o lo g y , Ed uca t i o n a n d D i s cove ry w ith H um anis m in Me dicine
Vol. 12 Issue 3 July 2023
The Power Behind Narrative Medicine healing. This practice can lead to more accurate clinical diagnoses, improved provider-patient relationships, and more effective patientcentered care. Dr. Charon shared a poem by Philip Larken entitled “Days,” What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priests and the doctor In their long white coats Running over the field Audience members participated in their own interpretation of the poem. Patient stories, like poems, have different interpretations based on who is listening. Some audience members thought the priest and doctor running through the fields to a patient’s bedside were a sign of joy, such as in new birth, while others thought it depicted the end of life and death. The poem also highlighted the importance of the physician and patient’s lives being intertwined. Physicians are therfore involved in the major events, such as childbirth and death, but also in day-to-day life.
The Department of Medicine was fortunate to host Rita Charon, MD, PhD, on March 7th. Dr. Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who founded the Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University with the goal of teaching physicians how to elicit, interpret, and act upon patient stories. Narrative medicine is the practice of using the same skills used in literary analysis to listen to and interpret what patients reveal about their lives and health. Prioritizing patient stories can illuminate the ways physical, social, and psychological elements of people’s lives intersect and thus contribute to illness and
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Points of View
learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. To me, a major question is why the public health system was so unprepared for such a catastrophic event and how can we do better for the next epidemic/pandemic, because it is certain there will be others. The possibility of a flu pandemic had been discussed for many years, but the occurrence of a coronavirus pandemic was also actively considered. In 2017, experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security published a report about the global spread of an influenza-like illness (SPARSCoV) in the year 2025. The many challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic were accurately predicted in scenarios outlined in this report. It is tragic that so many warnings did not lead to better preparedness for the pandemic! Missteps in the recognition and response to SARS-CoV-2 occurred right from its inception. The origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are debated; however, there is a consensus that the pandemic began at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan City in the Hubei province of China. The first cluster of cases at the Seafood Market attracted the attention of Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist working at the Central Hospital in Wuhan. On December 30, 2019,
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THE PANDEMIC AND MOVING FORWARD On May 5, 2023, the head of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) declared an end to COVID-19 as a public health emergency. Thus, hopefully, the dreadful saga of a disease that swept the world and transformed our lives ended. COVID-19, the disease caused by Rajiv Dhand, MD, Chair the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), left in its wake a staggering toll of disease and death worldwide with more than 762 million people infected and almost 7 million deaths. Furthermore, several millions of people continue to struggle with the after-effects of the infection on their health (Long COVID). The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020. Looking back over the past 3 years, many scholars and pundits have wondered what lessons we could
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