You have a big heart,
said Dr Broadbent, turning
a compliment into a fatal condition.
Poem by Olive M Ritch, 2018.
Commentary
An unfortunate pun. A nice example of the confusions inherent in communicating with patients.
Orcadian poet, Olive M. Ritch has written a number of poems on medical themes, and is a course tutor for Aberdeen Medical School’s Creative Writing for Medical Students.
Further info
-
- A Message (Scottish Poetry Library), a poem about dementia by Olive M Ritch was in the Hippocrates prize anthology 2011.
- The featured image is from Postmortem pathology; a manual of the technic of post-mortem examinations and the interpretations to be drawn therefrom by HW Cattell (JB Lippincot Co, 1906), available from the Internet Archive (image on Flickr).
The adjacent image could be the X-ray leading to Dr Broadbent’s comment. Annotated image to show measurements by Dr Frank Gaillard on Radiopaedia.
Contributed by
Olive M Ritch
Rate this post
[Total: 1 Average: 5]