The Program for Humanities in Medicine

Creative Medical Writing and Art Contest.

Unity in Solitude is the theme for the upcoming edition of Murmurs, the creative journal of Yale’s health profession students.

So begins the judges’ description of Anna Vignola’s poem, After Closing the Cadaver, which received first place in the Yale-UCL Poetry Competition in the category for students of medicine and allied disciplines.

In a Letter to the Editor, Nientara Anderson MD, MHS, Second-Year Resident in Psychiatry; Dowin Boatright MD, MBA, MHS, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine; and Anna Reisman, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine - General Medicine, respond to Plaisime and Cerdeña’s letter.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on women’s careers, finances and home lives. Although the vaccines may represent a solution, as scientists studying coronavirus infection and immune responses in women, we are now hearing from young women who say they might skip the shots out of fear for their fertility or nursing child. We are concerned about how inaccurate, extreme and widespread these theories have become, because getting vaccinated is the best way for women to protect themselves and their families.

As the Black Lives Matter movement, racial tension and police brutality became frequent parts of the national dialogue in recent months, faculty at the Yale School of Medicine proposed a new framework to combat racism in medical education. The article Blackface in White Space: Using Admissions to Address Racism in Medical Education was written by psychiatry resident Neintara Anderson, assistant professor of emergency medicine Dowin Boatright and professor Anna Reisman. The essay calls upon the medical admissions community to use both novel and existing tools such as admissions essays, questionnaires and interviews to screen candidates for racist beliefs. The essay was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine on July 28.

As many individuals across the United States and in New Haven are engaged in conversations and activism around systemic racism, sparked in part by the disparate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color and recent horrific incidents of police brutality against black men and women, around 170 members of the Yale community and others convened on Zoom on July 22 for a conversation entitled “Anti-Blackness, Abolition, and Criminal Justice: A Conversation with Dr. Emily Wang and Professor Tracey Meares."

“Most medical schools are white spaces where explicit and implicit racism occurs constantly and often goes unmentioned and unpunished,” according to a recently published article. Authored by Yale School of Medicine (YSM) Psychiatry Resident Nientara Anderson, MHS, MD; Dowin Boatright, MD, MBA, MHS, assistant professor of emergency medicine; and Anna Reisman, MD, professor and director, Program for Humanities in Medicine, Blackface in White Space: Using Admissions to Address Racism in Medical Education, appeared in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

In mid-March, COVID-19 upended the traditional Yale School of Medicine (YSM) curriculum for MD students. Didactic coursework and clinical skills training had to be rapidly converted to an online format, and clinical rotations and most sub-internships (sub-Is) were suspended in the space of a few days.