Michelle's Gold Humanism Award

After spending 3 years in med school including one full year of clinical rotations, my little Michelle received the Gold Humanism Award.  The following is the 250-word essay required to receive the award.

Illness is a private place. As doctors, we ask for permission to enter into our patients’ moments of vulnerability so that we may try to help them. Sometimes, we barge into their discomforts, their grief, and their shame. In acknowledgment of this, I believe that the most important task that a physician must take on is that of bridging whatever gaps exists between herself and the patient – this, I think, is humanism.

Coming to Boston Medical Center, I knew that I would be working with a large underserved population consisting of people that had vastly different day-to-day struggles than I had had in my life. I knew that I could never fully experience the world as they did, but I wanted to be able to understand their realities as best I could. Starting early first year, I joined Outreach Van Project and Homeless Health Immersion Experience and spent hours just talking with people, listening to the challenges that they had come up against and how that resulted in financial insecurity, listening to the emotional struggles that they had to go through and how they come out of it at the end of every day.

Sometimes, just being there allows you to traverse the distance between doctor and patient. When you sense that a patient is fearful or anxious, it counts for a lot to just linger in the room a moment after the rest of the team has left and offer any honest reassurance that you might be able to give. When your patient has been in the hospital for 89 days, it counts for a lot to make sure that you take half an hour every day to wheel him outside into the sunshine. Intangibles such as these are best learned when mentored, and that is one way in which I intend to promote humanism at Boston University School of Medicine – I will be participating in an elective where I’ll be mentoring MS1s during their first venture into patient interactions. I hope to impress upon my fellow students the importance of doing things – however big or small – to let your patient know that you are right here beside them on this journey.