The diastolic work of doctoring in 55-word stories

The clinical demands of residency training are significant in order to prepare residents to be independent clinicians upon graduation. Equally important to their clinical work is to provide residents with tools for reflection and lifelong learning. It is rare for resident physicians to be provided a formal opportunity to reflect together on the lives of patients and how they affect them. As part of a greater initiative to provide space for reflective practice in our residency curriculum we have created a series of required Health Humanities Workshops that occur during scheduled didactic time. It is during these workshops that we practice what Rita Charon terms “the diastolic work” of doctoring [1]. As opposed to the systolic work they spend most of their time doing (diagnosing, ordering, interpreting), this is a pause – a relaxing and absorbing – in which residents can begin to reflect, notice, and make meaning out of the way their patient’s stories have changed them. Our recent workshop on 55-word stories involved reading and discussing previously published 55-word stories and then writing our own. Below you will find a sample of stories written by our residents during this workshop. The residents have chosen to use abbreviations in their stories so that the story itself can remain 55-words. For example, instead of writing “nothing by mouth” the resident has used the abbreviation “NPO” and instead of writing out “Interventional Radiology,” the resident has used the abbreviation “IR” which is commonplace in the hospital setting where they work. The story “UIC: A nature documentary” references the resident’s hospital, The University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as the “Clinical Decision Unit” or “CDU” which is the name for the hospital’s overnight observation unit. The acronym “ACS” is used to abbreviate the diagnosis of “acute coronary syndrome.”