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From an analysis of medical student poetry published in Academic Medicine:
The voices in these students' poems struggle to hold on to elements of themselves (idealism, optimism, innocence) as they encounter a world that seems, variously, to diminish or dehumanize themselves and the patients they meet....
[They] often express a growing sense of alienation. They tend to depict hopeless, tragic, or horrifying situations, and students often write from the peripheries, such as a doorway, or as an observer behind the medical team.[283]
Two excerpts:
We are islands
and med school provides
few life preservers
for our sinking personalities...[284]
I breathe and remain silent
because my life is not my own
because I am not sure what is left of me
as I think this
I boil with hate
at the forces shackling me
at myself
and I'm just tired, man
and I feel deflated with pain.[285]
[283] Poiier, S, WR Ahrens and DJ Brauner. "Songs of Innocence and Experience." Academic Medicine 73(1998):473-478.
[284] Hundert, EM. "Characteristics of the Informal Curriculum and Trainees' Ethical Choices." Academic Medicine 71(1996):624-640.
[285] Poiier, S, WR Ahrens and DJ Brauner. "Songs of Innocence and Experience." Academic Medicine 73(1998):473-478.