Insensible Losses

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem “Insensible Losses” by Phoebe Prioleau. Prioleau is an attending child and adolescent psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Prioleau’s poetry has appeared in Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of Medical Humanities, JAMA, and the Journal of Palliative Medicine, which originally published her poem “Insensible Losses.”

The term “insensible losses” is medical lingo for the continual absence of awareness of bodily water loss through the skin while breathing or sweating.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 27 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is an instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences.