Background: Self-reflection is an essential tool to foster professional and personal development during medical training. The inpatient setting presents specific challenges to developing physicians, as housestaff grapple to negotiate death and dying, difficult patient interactions, and building therapeutic alliances within limited time. It’s not surprising that burnout and compassion fatigue increase during training. Integrating reflective [...]

Background: The healthcare workforce suffers from high levels of burnout, disengagement, and perceived isolation due to constant and unpredictable stresses. While multifactorial, the extent to which clinicians’ experience wellness and maintain resilience in a complex work environment is in part driven by connection to purpose and consciousness of elements of everyday activities that give joy. [...]

Case Presentation: A 64 year-old woman presented with two weeks of progressive refusal to eat, weakness, and somnolence. She had two weeks of abdominal pain that was worse with eating and diarrhea with significant weight loss and generalized weakness. She also endorsed worsening depression and suicidal ideation. Per the family, she was delusional and “losing [...]

Background: Imagine opening your patients’ electronic medical record (EMR) and seeing their stories, as told by them. Would that help you understand your patients better, both their resilience and the barriers they have faced? Systemic structures of oppression and health provider unconscious bias are root causes of racial, gender and class-based health disparities. Storytelling is [...]