Fall 2022: Identity
Editorial Team: Molly Fessler, Ellie Lorenzana, Limi Sharif, Marvin Urias, Trisha Gupte, Devon Gingrich, Claire Drysdale, Danielle DuPuis
Cover Design: Leah Rose
Featured Piece: The Distant Moon Podcast Episode 1
From the Editors:
Tell me about yourself.
I’ve been prompted to do this a lot recently, as I interview for residency positions, and prepare to graduate from medical school.
The Interview Industrial Complex, as I’ve come to think of it, the morass of Reddit experts and Youtube prophets who counsel aspiring health professionals on how to “crush/dominate/obliterate” the med/PA/dental school/residency interview, recommend that the response to this query be succinct.
Condense the most important parts of your story to no more than 5 sentences.
But that gets complicated, doesn’t it?
The Distant Moon
Welcome to The Distant Moon: Stories of Healthcare Education - a podcast about what it’s like to be a trainee in healthcare. My name is Ellie and I’m a fourth year medical student applying into pediatrics. In this podcast, I interviewed fellow medical students about their experiences in medical school so far. We talk about the good, the bad, the ugly of medical training as well as stories of personal illness, grief, loss, following one’s passions, and the development of physician identity. This project was borne out of my experience in my Masters program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University where I became interested in stories, both those of patients and providers. Medical training is a transformative and embodied process that changes one’s sense of identity and being in the world and I wanted to explore the ways in which this process occurs.
This podcast is called The Distant Moon, in honor of one of my favorite poems by physician poet Rafael Campo. The Distant Moon is about the tension between the clinical distance of the physician-patient relationship and the emotional attachment that comes with witnessing human suffering. It’s about the complex relationships we develop with patients based on our own identities, our previous experiences, and the emotional complexities of clinical medicine. It is about learning to recognize the essential humanness of the patient in front of you.
Welcome to The Distant Moon.