Nine resident physicians continued the tradition of reading aloud their works of narrative non-fiction during the 18th Annual Yale Internal Medicine Writers’ Workshop Resident Reading on February 3, 2022. Resident writers Lena Glowka and Stephanie Wu organized and hosted the event.
Mentored by Anna Reisman, MD and Lisa Sanders, MD, FACP, the writers wrote, revised, and practiced writing during a two-day workshop. Writing narratives during medical training can provide a way to derive meaning from challenging experiences, enhance reflection, and combat burnout. After the workshop, the participants continue to work on revising their essays and stories with ongoing mentoring by Reisman and Sanders.
The Yale resident writers who read from their work are: Christina Dimopoulos, Paul Eigenberger, Alexandra Lesenskyj, Augie Lindmark, Andrea Roberts, Nichole Roxas, Anita Vasudevan, Nate Wood, and Stephanie X. Wu. Twelve writers had participated in the workshop but Alexis Cordone, Glowka, and James Baier were not available to read.
Attending this year’s reading was Vanessa Grubbs, MD, MPH, a nephrologist and internist with the Alameda Health System, Division of Ambulatory and Preventive Medicine in California. Before the reading, Grubbs gave the talk, “After Interlaced Fingers: Lessons Learned Since Becoming an Author,” as Yale Internal Medicine’s Writing and Medicine Grand Rounds speaker.
“As having led ‘writing for change’ workshops with med students, residents, and practicing doctors, I'm struck by how only the residents are able to complete pieces,” said Grubbs. “The med students are filled with a lot of righteous indignation, but not enough knowledge or experience to fill out a piece. And I guess the practicing docs are too overwhelmed with the job and family and whatever else to follow through. Perhaps residents represent that place where indignation meets the experiences of our so-called health care system, and compels them to stick with their pieces until they're done.”
As she listened to the Yale residents, Grubbs created an impromptu poem with lines from their work:
I walked in absorbing the tension in the unit
I felt guilty for smiling
Each compression draws the remnants of my lunch upward.
I swallow
24 eggs each day, they keep disappearing
Grow gardens around your pain
But I water it anyway
He passed what, I wondered
The more he died the more vivid his life became
Time is short. Time to go. Time of death.
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The Department of Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine established the Writers' Workshop in 2003. To learn more, visit Writers’ Workshop.