Medicine
Frances Wu is an assistant director of the Somerset Family Medicine Residency Program in Somerville, NJ. She enjoys teaching, seeing patients and volunteering with the student-run clinic at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and with the Human Rights Clinic for HealthRight International. "I think that my career in family medicine has given me so much to live for and to write about that I can hardly contain it. I'm working on a novel this year with the impossibly concurrent themes of love, death and the healing power of laughter." The following poem was first published in Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine.
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An Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel has recently recommended further changes and modifications to the work rules governing medical residents. The recommendations go beyond the current rules, enforced by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education...
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One Million Hearts Saved or 160 Million Lives ImprovedPart II: Choices for Higher Priority Areas That Could Make a Difference National leaders have chosen a campaign to prevent deaths. This appears to make sense except for higher priority areas that represent...
- Guest Blog: Cure
Veneta Masson is a registered nurse and poet living in Washington, DC. She has written three books of essays and poems, drawing on her experiences over twenty years as a family nurse practitioner and director of an inner-city clinic. Information about...
- Why Government-run Health Care Can Be Good For You
Many politicians and television commentators are making "government-run health care" sound like a string of dirty words. I have a different view. To me, government-run health care makes me think about a patient I cared for during my family medicine residency...
Medicine
Guest Blog: The Limits of Medicine
Frances Wu is an assistant director of the Somerset Family Medicine Residency Program in Somerville, NJ. She enjoys teaching, seeing patients and volunteering with the student-run clinic at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and with the Human Rights Clinic for HealthRight International. "I think that my career in family medicine has given me so much to live for and to write about that I can hardly contain it. I'm working on a novel this year with the impossibly concurrent themes of love, death and the healing power of laughter." The following poem was first published in Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine.
**
THE LIMITS OF MEDICINE
THE LIMITS OF MEDICINE
I can not change the color of the sky.
The texture of the rain, the distance of a star
must needs be fixed by ancient ritual
unaccepted by our modernity.
I can not change the length of your night.
The number of hours, the days of your life
are set by stern fate, impassive to sighs,
unsympathetic, and cold to your plight.
I can not count the breaths that are left.
Day into day, year into frightened morn,
only you, in your heart can know
the obscurity of the sand that now sifts.
I can not make a single tear move;
Its salt will wend its way to the earth
that calls with an irresistible force,
one that will not soon leave off.
I have been roundly trounced
by movements and thunderings greater
by far than my hand's grasp;
and for their final victory, I apologize.
- Frances Wu
- Frances Wu
- Student Debt, Resident Hours, And Primary Care Redux
HAPPY NEW YEAR! May 2009 be a big improvement! The December 18, 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine includes Perspectives on 3 topics that have been previously addressed on this blog: Medical student debt (Dec 14), resident duty-hours (Dec...
- Medical Resident Work Hours
An Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel has recently recommended further changes and modifications to the work rules governing medical residents. The recommendations go beyond the current rules, enforced by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education...
- One Million Part Iii Higher Priorities
One Million Hearts Saved or 160 Million Lives ImprovedPart II: Choices for Higher Priority Areas That Could Make a Difference National leaders have chosen a campaign to prevent deaths. This appears to make sense except for higher priority areas that represent...
- Guest Blog: Cure
Veneta Masson is a registered nurse and poet living in Washington, DC. She has written three books of essays and poems, drawing on her experiences over twenty years as a family nurse practitioner and director of an inner-city clinic. Information about...
- Why Government-run Health Care Can Be Good For You
Many politicians and television commentators are making "government-run health care" sound like a string of dirty words. I have a different view. To me, government-run health care makes me think about a patient I cared for during my family medicine residency...