Interview Issue #6: Bias November 20th, 2020 November 20th, 2020 The Power of Our Actions: PSM Talks with Michele Harper by Tracy Granzyk ichele Harper’s breakout memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, was published in July of 2020. In it, she describes a life dedicated to healing and advocating for people in a US health system still searching for equity, and how her own process of healing has taught her to be a better doctor. Her surgically wrought prose ...
Read MoreEditorial Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Editor’s Introduction: Code Blue by Tracy Granzyk ur COVID-19 Special Section cover image, taken by resident physician Julie Muchinyi, captures what she is witnessing at the frontlines of care in New York City as her hard-earned intern year rolls into just her second year as a doctor. This issue goes live with the number of positive COVID-19 cases continuing to rise, challenging the mental and physical health ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Letter from the Fiction Editor: Heroes by AM Larks ave you ever wanted a hero to come rescue you from life? From your own mess? From circumstances beyond you control? I have a good friend who, when I was talking about why we need heroes, told me this story. When he was five years old, he wrote a letter to Superman asking for his help, asking to be ...
Read MoreEditorial Issue #5:Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Letter from the Editor: Heroes All Around Us by Tracy Granzyk “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” —Martin Luther King Jr. iving in Chicago, Illinois, one of the cities and states with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, I find it painful to watch vulnerable populations fall victim to this virus in large numbers. Social determinants of ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Letter from the Poetry Editor: Of Heroes, Poets, & Prophets by Steve Granzyk any of the poets in the summer issue, dedicated to heroes, provide acutely observed accounts of those desperately trying to save lives among the hundreds of thousands of patients who have COVID-19. Besides their descriptions of the physical and emotional suffering of patients, they provide sympathetically imagined first-person accounts of the fears and exhaustion ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 The Healing Power of Imagination: A Review of Victoria Chang’s Obit by Steve Granzyk n her fifth book of poems, Victoria Chang mourns her mother’s death from pulmonary fibrosis and the disintegration of her father’s mind after a stroke, including his deteriorating ability to speak coherently. In effect, both parents are now lost to her. Philosophically, Chang shows her grasp of the fundamental paradox of human existence—given ...
Read MoreInterview Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Strange Creatures: PSM Talks with Vikram Paralkar by A. M. Larks o call Vikram Paralkar an author and a researcher-doctor is correct but inaccurate. It is true that he is all those things, but it is imprecise to treat them as separate identities. Each feeds the other in such a unified way that they are inseparable. This is just as true in Paralkar’s second book, Night Theater, as ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Reverse Transcription by Elizabeth Tomanio Reverse Transcription With my mouth covered, half my face is lost, unknown. The lines around my mouth, indicating a polite or genuine smile, are disguised by light blue, creased lines. I lose definition. Only my eyes remain. A deaf man panics, as I repeat the sweep of my hand over his forehead. My lips are not visible to read. An expectant mother arrives scheduled for induced labor, holding an empty car seat. An exception is made for end of life. A brother and sister prepare to see their father for ...
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