Art II

Why write? For me, writing provides a necessary outlet to organize in my head and express the complex emotions, unfamiliar situations, and difficult moments that are inherent to medical school and taking care of sick people. Blogging every day, even if it is not directly about my day-to-day experiences, allows me to decompress about the faults in medicine and brainstorm on ways to fix it. More and more, reflection is seeping into medical education, but I am not sure it should be universalized. Reflective writing works for me, but that doesn't necessarily apply to everyone. By now, most students know how they deal best with stress; writing is only one of many ways to let that out.

But stories and poetry are also more than that. Narratives are how we describe the world. No matter how hard science tries to sterilize or objectify medicine, it remains in a world of human experience. Each patient and her illness unfolds as a story over time. Each patient will tell a unique story, if only we listen. Stories are a dynamic, probing, and interactive art form. They challenge readers, create worlds, stimulate imagination, and confront human emotion. Underlying each different perspective is some unifying shared human experience, allowing great stories to speak universally.

In any case, art is important. What we create in this world lasts. Why do doctors take care of the sick, prevent patients from dying, try to extend quality of life? So those people can live and create and love. We are not an end in ourselves. We exist to support those human activities that create art, build community, push the frontiers of discovery, and celebrate humanity.