Explore JAMA’s A Piece of My Mind essays, real-life stories from physicians about the joys and challenges of practicing medicine in the modern era.
In this narrative medicine essay, JAMA’s editor in chief remembers his career mentors and their selflessness as they guided him in his early and mid-career and later became friends and colleagues.
In this narrative medicine essay, a palliative care physician finds the space between professional and patient distance thinning as the COVID pandemic drags on and wonders whether abiding with them is the lesson.
This essay discusses the author’s experience with stuttering as a medical student and how injustices surrounding speech fluency affect minoritized individuals.
This article provides the perspective of a first-line responder after an explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, on August 4, 2020.
This essay describes the author’s experience of not being able to visit and advocate for her mother in the intensive care unit during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.
This article describes the unique difficulties faced by non-US citizen physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this narrative medicine essay, a pediatrician describes her struggle to recognize postpartum depression with the birth of her third child and how she found her way out.
In this essay, an oncology fellow describes how his conversations with patients with terminal cancer and their families have changed regarding travel and gathering restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic
In this narrative medicine essay a geriatrics fellow describes the experience of preparing for and meeting her foster son and discusses her feelings of uncertainties that (mostly) melt away when sharing her new child's photo with a colleague the day after bringing him home.
In this narrative medicine essay, a surgeon tells of her experience as a caretaker for her partner disabled by chronic sequelae of head trauma, and the challenges it poses as she tries to maintain the professional distance required to do her job as a trauma attending.
In this narrative medicine essay an infectious diseases physician shares the sense of forgiveness she brings to anyone possibly involved in COVID-19 transmission, having learned as a child the healing power of family absolution after she witnessed the death of a cousin.
This article describes a young patient’s legacy of resilience, strength, love, hope, and peace.
In this narrative medicine essay, a medical school professor expresses gratitude for the caring and empathy expressed by the team caring for her mother hospitalized with COVID-19 and emphasizes the importance of humanity and compassion over facts and statistics for families physically separated from their critically ill loved ones.
In this narrative medicine essay, a psychiatrist finally at peace after his wife's death to cancer learns that his prostate-specific antigen levels have begun to rise, reminding him to embrace uncertainty, a loss of control, and change.
In this narrative medicine essay an internal medicine hospitalist explores what the new diagnosis of breast cancer means for her professional identity and considers how the COVID-19 pandemic facilitates the hiding of serious illness but also complicates disclosing the news to colleagues and friends.
This essay discusses the use of food substitutes rather than medications as a treatment for electrolyte repletion.
This Arts and Medicine feature offers an appreciation of mid-20th century novelist, essayist, memoirist, and civil rights activist James Baldwin and argues for his continuing relevance to medicine and society at large.
In this narrative medicine essay, a geriatrician memory of a neuroradiology fellow’s words of calm when breaking the news that her 8-year-old daughter had a brain tumor often bubbles up years later when she breaks bad news to patients with COVID who are without the support of friends or family.
This perspective is that of a nursing researcher turned volunteer in a COVID-19 vaccine trial. She considers the experience of study participants and how clinicians will need to prepare their patients for the vaccine’s possible adverse effects.
This essay describes the author’s personal experiences witnessing the opioid epidemic and its devastation in Kentucky.
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