Health care workers learn to probe the intimate depths of an individual often through a dispassionate, scientific lens and language: measuring and interpreting blood serum chemistries, taking a history of illicit drug use, episodes of heart disease within the family. These questions are important for understanding the biomedical aspects of disease, but humanistic healthcare requires understanding the social, psychological, affective, and existential aspects of illness as well. Art can help us expand the boundaries of our exploration beyond the body further, to the individual beyond the pathology. The artist Hrair Sarkissian describes their piece ’Last Scene’ (2016) as “a series of 47 photographs of places in The Netherlands that were chosen by terminally ill patients to go and see as their last wish. The project centers on the power of a well-loved place to compress an outlook on life into a telling scene that is at once melancholic and joyful. The simplicity of each landscape or scene heightens attention to an inner journey of remembering the past and envisioning a future that no longer includes you. In contemporary culture the notion of death and dying is often consciously ignored. This project gives the viewer a way in to grapple with the question of where we come from, and where we are going. The images turn into mirrors: on the one hand you try to imagine the person who looked at the scene for the last time, while at the same time it encourages introspection: “what would my wish be?” These scenes were photographed at the date and time of the actual last visit.”

Please view at least 5 of these photographs. Spend time staring at them, and even when you think you've taken in everything one has to offer you, look a while longer and see if additional thoughts or insights emerge.  Reflect on these images. 

In 200-300 words answer the following questions about each photograph:

1. What sort of image (physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, etc) of each patient associated with each photograph comes to your mind?
2. How might those insights help you provide more humanistic care to those patients?

General Instructions:

In this learning activity, you will reflect on the poem identified below and answer questions as it relates to your interpretation and experiences in the field of medicine.

Step 1: Read and Reflect

Read the poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye and reflect on the excerpt below regarding poetry as a means of self-expression and a brief background on the poem.

Reading and writing poetry is as much a tool for self-expression as a tool for self-exploration. While reading the works provided below, connect with the memories, associations, and emotions that the poems bring forward for you personally. 

As you read, think about how your own relationship with loss/death/suffering changed because of your experiences in healthcare (either as a patient, a student, or a practitioner).  Do you feel your capacity for empathy has deepened or dulled?  How do these experiences impact the way you view yourself and your patients?

Naomi Shihab Nye wrote this poem shortly after a horrific experience during her honeymoon. She and her husband planned to spend a few weeks in South America but shortly after arriving the entire bus they were traveling with was robbed. One man on the bus was killed during the incident. Later, a local man approached them, sensing their distress, and asked what happened. He listened and was kind. While her husband hitchhiked to a nearby town, with night approaching quickly, penniless, without a passport, sitting alone in an empting small town plaza Naomi Shihab Nye wrote this poem. Here kindness is connected with experiences of sorrow and as one deepens, often so does the other. This connection is later reiterated as kindness being both a friend, and a shadow. It is not sorrow alone that deepens our appreciation of kindness but rather we must “speak to it until your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth;” it is when we allow our sorrow to connect us to the universal experience of suffering, with others, and with what we love. How does the sorrow you experience connect you with others and what does it bring you to more deeply appreciate?

Step 2: Respond

Once you have meticulously reflected on the poem, prepare a 200-300 words written piece which addresses the following key questions:

• How does the sorrow you experience connect you with others and what does it bring you to more deeply appreciate?  
• How might the experience of sorrow help you connect with your current/future patients?

To submit your work, click on the “Add a new discussion topic” button under this post and paste your work in the “Message” box. Make sure to reference others’ intellectual property when necessary. All references should follow 7th Edition APA formatting. For further instructions, see the resource on the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library: APA citation resource (N.B.: references are excluded from word counts).

OPTIONAL Step 4: Interact (10 minutes)

If you would like to, you can reply to your peers' posts in a respectful and professional manner. Ensure that your post engages your peers' ideas by including a reflection on their comments, sharing ideas of other potential difficulties and parties involved, or asking thought-provoking questions. If a peer comments on your posting, please reply. To post a reply, click “Reply” on a particular discussion, write your feedback and then click on “Post to forum.”