ABSTRACT
Connection with patients is complex, and there is a more troubling, darker side to interactions and involvement with patients. Students struggle with a lack of connection when they feel that they should be connected. Students often inject humor into their poetry to help them to cope, as well as to give them perspective. The dilemmas posed by trying to navigate the student-patient relationship can sometimes overwhelm the student. In one poem, the student struggles with fear that inhibits her connection with her patient. In most of these poems, however, students tend to adopt a position of witnessing, only now they bear witness to incomplete or transitory connection, or the inevitable separation between student and patient. In most of these poems, however, students tend to adopt a position of witnessing, only now they bear witness to incomplete or transitory connection, or the inevitable separation between student and patient.
