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Transformational Times
Words of Hope, Character & Resilience from our Virtual Community
Friday, August 26, 2022
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Thank you to Laura Grogan, MD Candidate Class of 2024 and 2022 Vot-ER Civic Health Fellow for curating this week’s issue... | |
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Guest Director's Corner
Perspective/Opinion
Meet the MCW Civic Engagement Interest Group
Visual Art
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Natalie Honan: Voting for my patients
Poetry Corner
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Mary Oliver: University Hospital: Boston
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Your Turn
Upcoming Events/Announcements
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Guest Director's Corner
In My Shoes: Perspectives on Advocacy, Voting, and Legislation
By Christopher S. Davis, MD, MPH
“The superior physician rescues the state, whereas the inferior one merely attends to the sick.”
-Yi He, third century BC
My high school English teacher helped me through writer’s block with these wise words: “write about what you know.” Though I did not grasp the importance at the time, that has guided my writing for years. When reading my colleagues’ pieces while pulling together this week’s issue of the Transformational Times, I was humbly reminded of all we as providers must learn when it comes to advocacy, voting and legislation. This work can be daunting, exhausting, uncomfortable, foreign and frustratingly slow - the pace challenges me the most as a trauma surgeon trained for rapid interventions.
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Perspective/Opinion
Incremental Change, my Antidote to Political Dissociation
By Laura Grogan, MD Candidate Class of 2024
Medical Student advocate Laura Grogan reflects upon challenging herself to work towards bipartisan ways to make progress when the temptation to disengage is high…
Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, I naively felt that debate and constructive conversation were a-okay, but little did I know this was more accurately described as slight nuances of like-minded individuals. My perception of Wisconsin as historically accepting of diverse perspectives is limited and flawed by the naivety of my privileged and sheltered upbringing…untangling my privilege from my memories will be a lifelong project. In my desire to pry my mind open to comprehend the experiences of others, I have learned to lean on regional experts who work day-to-day on these issues to inform my advocacy efforts. Much like a consult to a specialist for the most up-to-date recommendations for treatment, we must lean on those who live the outcomes and do the work to tell us what needs to be done. When I stumbled across the Vot-ER Civic Health Fellowship, I knew I had found an opportunity to challenge myself.
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Perspective/Opinion
Reflections on an Introduction to Advocacy
By Swathi Prasad, MD – Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellow, PGY-5
Dr. Prasad reflects on her time in the inaugural Vot-ER Civic Health Fellowship and lessons in community engagement and advocacy one year in…
When I first joined the Vot-ER Civic Health Fellowship in the fall of 2021, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I utilized the Vot-ER framework when I joined the Safe Vote Wisconsin Task Force (est. 2020). This small but mighty group had been my rapid introduction to challenges faced to integrate voter registration in institutions around Milwaukee. Attendings, residents and medical students worked quickly to encourage voter registration at many levels of patient care. This group mobilized quickly and leveraged connections with the Wisconsin Public Health Association, Wisconsin Medical Society and local health departments and accomplished much in a short period of time. From hosting a session with Vot-ER founder Dr. Alister Martin, to creating medical student volunteer events for voting information to patients and providers, to spreading safe voting flyers and digital media, we created new opportunities for community engagement in the context of voting. Despite our efforts in 2020, we felt there was so much more we could have done. The Vot-ER fellowship provided a way for me to leverage outside expertise on how to be a better informed, better-trained physician advocate.
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Perspective/Opinion
Reflections in Voting: Planning Ahead to Get Yourself and Others to the Polls
By Amy Domeyer-Klenske, MD – Wisconsin ACOG Legislative Chair
Dr. Domeyer-Klenske, an obstetrician and gynecologist, reflects upon the importance of planning ahead where possible and getting creative when getting yourself and others to the polls …
I am a native Iowan and clearly remember my first Iowa caucus. My family was never particularly active in politics, and I remember learning from my college roommate, a political science major, the differences between a Democrat and Republican. My first elections came at a formative time in my life as I began to understand voting as a civic responsibility. Despite living their entire lives in the state, I doubt either of my parents had ever previously attended the caucuses. In 2008, my mother succumbed to my badgering and drove with me in the frigid Iowa winter to the Tri-State Blind Society where collections of voters would join with their neighbors to discuss candidates and pledge allegiance to their favorite. There was a thrill in convincing voters of non-viable candidates (those who did not have enough voters to claim any share of electors) to support your candidate. It is an odd scene, requires you to be on-site for the duration of the event and to publicly claim your party affiliation and favored politician. I remember my mom whispering to me as we walked into the building, “you mean I must register as a Democrat? What will my friends say?” This early moment in my voting life helped me to understand the importance of reaching out a hand and bringing others with you to participate in elections.
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Perspective/Opinion
In the Streets, At Your Ward and In Your Doctor’s Office
By Alexa Wild, Clinical Research Coordinator in the Department of Neurosurgery
When so much of life feels out of our control, how can we truly help others?
What memories do you have of empowering someone? I hope it comes easily to you, and if you are reading this, I imagine you are someone that makes an impact.
On a chilly February morning, in a Milwaukee Park pavilion, I created a core memory. As an election worker, I had always avoided operating the registration table. It was a role I deemed too important for me to take on. I was trained and educated on the process, but I did not feel I had earned the role yet. But that February day, after arranging all the documents for the table, rather than walking away, I sat down.
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Perspective/Opinion
The Power of Voting
By Benjamin O’Brien, PhD Cell Biology Student
Voting may be viewed as ineffectual, casting one stone in the depths of a vast ocean, but one stone can reverberate across the ocean and combine to generate a wave of change…
As a cynical 18-year-old in 2013, I heard lots of discourse about the “power” of voting and what a great privilege it was to have this right. Initially, I didn’t take it to heart. I questioned, “who even likes politicians? When has one vote ever swung any election?” I figured I would register eventually and maybe vote here and there if I remembered, which wasn’t very often. It seemed like the US was on a generally progressive and inclusive path that would continue without my input. I carried on this way for several years, until 2016, when my outlook shifted completely. My busy school schedule and sense of doubt for the process no longer seemed like adequate excuses to not participate. I realized; we can’t win if we don’t show up.
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Perspective/Opinion
Reflections on Firearm Injury Prevention Outside of the OR
By Arielle (Elle) Thomas, MD, MPH, MS – PGY3 Surgery Resident
Inaugural American College of Surgery Firearm Injury Prevention scholar, Dr. Arielle Thomas, reflects upon the power we have to affect our patients outside of the hospital or operating room…
As a doctor, it is my duty to heal and my responsibility to provide medical treatment to the best of my abilities. As a person, it is in my nature to care about the ways that people are hurting, both in and outside of the hospital. However, as I have progressed in my surgery residency, I have been concerned with the way medicine merely treats the symptoms of the disease, instead of curing the problem. My Master of Public Health degree taught me that doctors are only tending to part of the problem. The field of medicine has considerable constraints on its ability to engage in a crucial and effective way into the social issues that bring the most patients into the hospital. Nevertheless, as health professionals, we were meant to stop the bleeding, not just in the field or in the operating room, but beyond that, in the hearts and minds of those suffering each day. The power we have to affect patient treatment goes further than the hospital. Zora Neale Houston stated, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
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Meet the MCW Civic Engagement Interest Group
The Civic Engagement Interest Group (CEIG) brings together graduate, pharmacy and medical students to educate and empower them to become advocates. Their events include presentations to all students to encourage early registration and preparation for elections, workshops to navigate WI legislation, a provider advocacy panel, and a weekly voter registration booth.
Come see them at the booth every Tuesday from 10 am-2 pm in the 3rd floor HUB!
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Visual Art by Natalie Honan | |
Natalie Honan is an MD Candidate from the class of 2023. | |
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University Hospital: Boston
By Mary Oliver
The trees on the hospital lawn
are lush and thriving. They too
are getting the best of care,
like you, and the anonymous many,
in the clean rooms high above the city,
where day and night the doctors keep
arriving, or intricate machines
chart with cool devotion
the murmur of the blood,
the slow patching up of bone,
the despair of the mind.
When I come to visit and we walk out
into the light of a summer day,
we sit under the trees—
buckeyes, a sycamore and one
black walnut brooding
high over a hedge of lilacs
as old as the red-brick building
behind them, the original
hospital built before the Civil War.
We sit on the lawn together, holding hands
while you tell me: you are better.
How many young men, I wonder,
came here, wheeled on cots off the slow trains
from the red and hideous battlefields
to lie all summer in the small and stuffy chambers
while doctors did what they could, longing
for tools still unimagined, medicines still unfound,
wisdoms still unguessed yet, and how many died
staring at the leaves of the trees, blind
to the terrible effect effort around them to keep them alive?
I look into your eyes
which are sometimes green and sometimes gray,
and sometimes full of humor, but often not,
and tell myself you are better,
because my life without you would be
a place of parched and broken trees.
Later, walking the corridors down to the street
I turn and step inside an empty room.
Yesterday someone was here with a gasping face.
Now the bed is made all new,
machines have been rolled away. The silence
continues, deep and neutral,
as I stand there, loving you.
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Readers Respond to last week's reflection prompt:
What is your best advice to M1 students?
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Receive your training and its challenges openly and without judgment. Each year presents new and unique challenges, with M1 and M3 being some of the more radical adjustments. Work hard, follow your gut when taking risks, learn from failure, and forgive. Reflect on difficult situations and you'll see how much you have grown by M4.
– M4 Medical Student
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Write down the top 2 things that make you, you, right now. Choose one 10-60 minute activity every day that helps you get grounded in these things. Create a routine in your study schedule to fit in this self-care time, you will not regret combining this with outdoor time! Find an upperclassman that you can go to for questions/general advice/study tips and check in with them at least biweekly. Stay current with the material and active review daily. Do not take on too many things in the first semester and do say yes to at least a few activities. Go to all of the meetings that give you free food. It is okay to take a break day. Mine was Sundays. Give yourself grace.
– Jessica, Medical Student
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For this week's reflection prompt, please answer the following question:
What movie best represents your summer?
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New England Journal of Medicine Invited Article
The Physician-Patient Relationship
Arthur Derse, MD, JD recently published an invited article on the physician-patient relationship.
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Attention US Medical Students:
Please Complete Survey on Remediation Practices
MCW Medical Students Madeline Ebert and Julia Bosco are working on a research project examining attitudes toward remediation practices amongst US medical students.
The first step in their project is to conduct a survey designed to assess students’ understanding of their institution’s remediation practices and how they feel about remediation in various contexts.
If you are a US Medical student, please consider taking a moment to fill out the survey below.
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Please Join Us!
KICS Journal Club with Dr. Sara Spinella
Register to join us at our monthly Kern Institute Collaboration for Scholarship Medical Education Journal Club! Each month, we discuss recent medical education scholarship with its author for a lively, intimate conversation about the transformation of medical education.
In September, Dr. Sara Spinella will be discussing her curriculum on the management of alcohol use disorder and the process of publishing curriculum in MedEd Portal.
Dr. Spinella is a physician at the Pittsburgh VA Medical Center where she specializes in the care of women with substance use disorders. She completed her Master's in Medical Education and GIM fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh.
September 14, 2022
12:15 - 1:00 pm CT
Live Via Zoom
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The Transition to Residency Symposium
Night-onCall, co-founded by Dr. Sondra Zabar and Dr. Adina Kalet, is an immersive, clinically- authentic simulation experience for near-graduating medical students that provides the student, and the medical school, with comprehensive, debriefed feedback on readiness from multiple perspectives. Please join the NOC Symposium for a virtual interactive discussion on communication and clinical competency during the transition to residency.
During this Symposium, you will have an opportunity to:
- Hear from Dr. Holly Humphrey, the President of the Macy Foundation, on how consortia like Night-onCall contribute to the future of medical education
- Learn about the impact of simulation from medical schools that have implemented Night-onCall
- Understand how using data-rich feedback for learners can help your curriculum and learners' transition into residency
October 28, 2022
10:00 - 2:00 pm CT
Live Via Zoom
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The Transformational Times publishes weekly, delivering stories of hope, character and resilience to our virtual community. | |
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Jeff Fritz, PhD, Editor-in-Chief
Editorial Board: Bruce Campbell, MD, Kathlyn Fletcher, MD, Adina Kalet, MD, Wendy Peltier, MD, Erin Weileder, Nabil Attlassy, Julia Bosco, Ana Istrate, Wolf Pulsiano, Eileen Peterson, Anna Visser, James Wu & Emelyn Zaworski
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