Humanities resources to support healthcare professionals and patients
The last 1000 days, Molly Case Commentary As we slowly make the shift to practise realistic medicine, where “patients are at the centre of decision making”, it’s more important now to understand what’s truly important to those who are at the receiving end of medical care. The poem The last 1000 days is written in a language Read More …
Commentary All of us, doctors or health workers or patients, will suffer loss in our lives. That loss may be disappointment in an examination or a relationship, loss of faith in an ideal, or most seriously, loss through death of someone whom we love. Grief constitutes the suffering that always accompanies and follows loss. In Read More …
What the doctor said: Raymond Carver ‘He said it doesn’t look good He said in fact it looks real bad he said I counted thirty-two of them in one lung before I quit counting them I said I’m glad I wouldn’t want to know about any more there being there than that….’ Read the full Read More …
Commentary Thom Green is drummer for Alt-J – and has kidney failure and a transplant, and deafness, all caused by the inherited condition Alport Syndrome, which came on in his teens. In short videos he talks about the shock of dialysis, how different living with a transplant is, and about his (deceased) kidney donor. There’s Read More …
Dealing with death, Miguel Torga Coimbra, 10 December 1958 Twenty-five years now that I’ve been battling death professionally, and I feel more incapable than ever of understanding and accepting it. Halfway between the peasant in the pure state and pure intellect, when death comes calling I find neither the peace of the credulous person who Read More …
Use of Penicillin in 1945, Miguel Torga Coimbra, 1 February 1945 Penicillin. I too want to try out the last panacea invented by science. On a young boy burning up with fever, pus running out of his ears and terrible pain. In the old days, the tympanic membrane would be doused with milk from a Read More …
Maternal Health in Afghanistan, Khalid Hosseini. Inside the old, dingy operating room, Laila lay on a gurney bed as the doctor scrubbed her hands in a basin. Laila was shivering. She drew in air through her teeth every time the nurse wiped her belly with a cloth soaked in a yellow-brown liquid. Another nurse stood Read More …
and a desperate parent. Erlkönig by Schubert and the Erlkings. Who rides through the night so late in the wild It is a father with his only child He holds him tight He holds him warm O father can you see The Erlking is near The evil Erlking with eyes burning red O father, O Read More …
It was as the snow started falling that she blurted it out not meant for the kids, not meant for here, for the snowwoman with her pink hat and old carrot nose, And once it was out she wished she could call it back in, like a dog you could whistle to, but it wouldn’t, Read More …
I was as fearful of failing as I had been with my A-levels, but there was also a terrible sense of unease about what was happening to me, to which I couldn’t put a name. As I prepared for my finals, with my mind map, and my chart of each available hour, there came a Read More …