Skip to content
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Book
  • Careers
  • Podcast
  • Recommended
  • Speaking
  • All
  • Physician
  • Practice
  • Policy
  • Finance
  • Conditions
  • .edu
  • Patient
  • Meds
  • Tech
  • Social
  • Video
    • All
    • Physician
    • Practice
    • Policy
    • Finance
    • Conditions
    • .edu
    • Patient
    • Meds
    • Tech
    • Social
    • Video
    • About
    • Contact
    • Contribute
    • Book
    • Careers
    • Podcast
    • Recommended
    • Speaking

Ironically, our first assigned patient encounter as medical students would be a corpse

Lauren Joseph
Education
January 23, 2020
Share
Tweet
Share

“Death comes for all of us. It is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Dealing with the fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.”
– Paul Kalanithi, MD

Recently, first-year students of the medical and physician’s assistant classes completed their seventh and final practical exam in clinical anatomy. Through fifteen weeks, 117 students learned the structures of the human body organized by region, working from the chest to the toes and finishing with structures in the head and neck.

As the late Stanford physician Paul Kalanithi aptly noted in When Breath Becomes Air, death is “unsettling.” In the first lab section, hushed nervous giggles disclosed discomfort as blue-scrubbed students searched the room for their own smiling photographs. Six students were assigned to each table, and each table was assigned to one cadaver.

Professors and teaching assistants floated around the room encouraging students. One professor paused by our table to reflect, “In a way, you’re cutting apart her body in order to put back together her story.” His words bestowed purpose on the dissection, which otherwise felt somewhat violating.

Our professor told a story about a wedding he attended with five people from his first-year anatomy lab. I looked around the room and took in the faces of people I might entrust with my life. My patient’s life. My mother’s life. The students at each table would be each other’s team, and the assignment was intimate. Over the coming weeks, friendships would forge, but the first day required basics only: gloves, scrubs, and closed-toed shoes.

Before starting to dissect, we shared a long, silent moment of thanks to the donors who willed their bodies for our program. Over the course of these moments, the nervous energy in the room transformed into reverent composure. A crescendo of zippers broke the silence as each table prepared to greet their cadaver for the first time.

Ironically, our first assigned patient encounter as medical students would be a corpse. For some of us, our donor would also be our first encounter with death. Each week we spent hours with our patient, a non-living, non-breathing, and non-metabolizing body of a person who once was. After finishing our final run through the lab cleaning checklist, my tablemates and I offered another moment of silence to say goodbye to our donor.

In some ways, this course punctuates my adulthood. I can’t go back to when I was a kid, and I joked about “guts” and “skeletons” around Halloween. I can’t go back to thinking my lungs are like sparkly birthday balloons inflating and deflating in my chest. I can’t go back to believing that “the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.”

The loss of my fantasies about the body is not to say that the body has lost any of its wonder. I simply passed the threshold of an open door, and I can’t go back to a place of not knowing. I have new insight and perspective. I learned in this course that people continue telling stories, even when they’re no longer living.

Lauren Joseph is a medical student who blogs at Scope, where this article originally appeared.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

Prev

Making humanism in medicine more humanistic

January 23, 2020 Kevin 0
…
Next

Gratitude collateral: A little thanks can go a long way

January 24, 2020 Kevin 0
…

Tagged as: Medical school

Post navigation

< Previous Post
Making humanism in medicine more humanistic
Next Post >
Gratitude collateral: A little thanks can go a long way

ADVERTISEMENT

More by Lauren Joseph

  • When you’re a physician, you’re a detective

    Lauren Joseph
  • How the ritual of handwashing affected this medical student

    Lauren Joseph
  • A love-hate relationship with the resume-guided voice

    Lauren Joseph

Related Posts

  • A universal patient medical record

    Michael R. McGuire
  • Advice for first-year medical students

    Jamie Katuna
  • Physicians and medical students: Unlearn helplessness

    Jamie Katuna
  • An open letter to graduating medical students

    Lilian White
  • Advice for graduating medical students

    R. Lynn Barnett
  • How medical education fails minority students

    Shenyece Ferguson

More in Education

  • My first week on night float as a medical student

    Amish Jain
  • Why doctors need emotional literacy training

    Vineet Vishwanath
  • A simple 10-10-10 tool to prevent burnout through mindfulness

    Annabelle Bailey
  • How racism and policy failures shape reproductive health in America

    Kaitlynn Esemaya, Alexis Thompson, Annique McLune, and Anamaria Ancheta
  • Imagining a career path beyond medicine and its impact

    Hunter Delmoe
  • What is professional identity formation in medicine?

    Adrian Reynolds, PhD
  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • The human case for preserving the nipple after mastectomy

      Thomas Amburn, MD | Conditions
    • Nuclear verdicts and rising costs: How inflation is reshaping medical malpractice claims

      Robert E. White, Jr. & The Doctors Company | Policy
    • How new loan caps could destroy diversity in medical education

      Caleb Andrus-Gazyeva | Policy
    • IMGs are the future of U.S. primary care

      Adam Brandon Bondoc, MD | Physician
    • 10 hard truths about practicing medicine they don’t teach in school

      Steven Goldsmith, MD | Physician
    • Why doctors struggle with family caregiving and how to find grace [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
  • Past 6 Months

    • Health equity in Inland Southern California requires urgent action

      Vishruth Nagam | Policy
    • How restrictive opioid policies worsen the crisis

      Kayvan Haddadan, MD | Physician
    • Why primary care needs better dermatology training

      Alex Siauw | Conditions
    • Why pain doctors face unfair scrutiny and harsh penalties in California

      Kayvan Haddadan, MD | Physician
    • How a doctor defied a hurricane to save a life

      Dharam Persaud-Sharma, MD, PhD | Physician
    • What street medicine taught me about healing

      Alina Kang | Education
  • Recent Posts

    • 10 hard truths about practicing medicine they don’t teach in school

      Steven Goldsmith, MD | Physician
    • The myth of biohacking your way past death

      Larry Kaskel, MD | Conditions
    • How trust and communication power successful dyad leadership in health care [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Why Hollywood’s allergy jokes are dangerous

      Lianne Mandelbaum, PT | Conditions
    • How I learned to love my unique name as a doctor

      Zoran Naumovski, MD | Physician
    • My first week on night float as a medical student

      Amish Jain | Education

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.


Find jobs at
Careers by KevinMD.com

Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now.

Learn more

View 1 Comments >

Founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, KevinMD.com is the web’s leading platform where physicians, advanced practitioners, nurses, medical students, and patients share their insight and tell their stories.

Social

  • Like on Facebook
  • Follow on Twitter
  • Connect on Linkedin
  • Subscribe on Youtube
  • Instagram

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • The human case for preserving the nipple after mastectomy

      Thomas Amburn, MD | Conditions
    • Nuclear verdicts and rising costs: How inflation is reshaping medical malpractice claims

      Robert E. White, Jr. & The Doctors Company | Policy
    • How new loan caps could destroy diversity in medical education

      Caleb Andrus-Gazyeva | Policy
    • IMGs are the future of U.S. primary care

      Adam Brandon Bondoc, MD | Physician
    • 10 hard truths about practicing medicine they don’t teach in school

      Steven Goldsmith, MD | Physician
    • Why doctors struggle with family caregiving and how to find grace [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
  • Past 6 Months

    • Health equity in Inland Southern California requires urgent action

      Vishruth Nagam | Policy
    • How restrictive opioid policies worsen the crisis

      Kayvan Haddadan, MD | Physician
    • Why primary care needs better dermatology training

      Alex Siauw | Conditions
    • Why pain doctors face unfair scrutiny and harsh penalties in California

      Kayvan Haddadan, MD | Physician
    • How a doctor defied a hurricane to save a life

      Dharam Persaud-Sharma, MD, PhD | Physician
    • What street medicine taught me about healing

      Alina Kang | Education
  • Recent Posts

    • 10 hard truths about practicing medicine they don’t teach in school

      Steven Goldsmith, MD | Physician
    • The myth of biohacking your way past death

      Larry Kaskel, MD | Conditions
    • How trust and communication power successful dyad leadership in health care [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Why Hollywood’s allergy jokes are dangerous

      Lianne Mandelbaum, PT | Conditions
    • How I learned to love my unique name as a doctor

      Zoran Naumovski, MD | Physician
    • My first week on night float as a medical student

      Amish Jain | Education

MedPage Today Professional

An Everyday Health Property Medpage Today
  • Terms of Use | Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA Policy
All Content © KevinMD, LLC
Site by Outthink Group

Ironically, our first assigned patient encounter as medical students would be a corpse
1 comments

Comments are moderated before they are published. Please read the comment policy.

Loading Comments...