"Medical Education"

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares his poem "Medical Education." How to educate physicians? What is essential to know? Berlin witnessed first hand the evolution of medical education… still a fire hose of facts to learn, but new efforts like clinical practice exams with live actors, support for the medical humanities, and teaching students to incorporate the patient’s beliefs and values. All provided a trajectory of improvement. This poem provides a summary of his own medical school education.

Medical Education

What they taught

in school was not

what we needed,

and what we needed

(they said)

could not be conveyed.

So we struck out

on our own

and learned

from our patients

the lessons we needed

to know:

how to break

bad news,

place our own comfort last,

and say nothing

when nothing

more could be said.

And we returned

what they taught

to others

who learned

what we knew

was almost enough.

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.