PPE

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She was tired after working twelve straight days on her current rotation.

It was her third year of medical school, and she was already feeling burnt out.

“I have five more years like this,” she said. “My sister tells me, ‘Keep pushing, you can get through it,’ but I don’t know if I can. Today I had my shelf exam and it went horribly. I don’t see what else I could cut out to study more or work harder.”

“I look around and my classmates seem to be doing fine, getting engaged, getting married even. And I’m not even dating! I’m going to figure it out, it’s not like I don’t want to be a doctor any more, I’m just so tired of waiting for the ‘later’ when it’s supposed to get easier.”

Listener Poet Frankie Abralind

Association of American Medical Colleges

September 2020

COVID nineteen

may not be here to stay

but my med student life

feels less live every day.

Trips, parties, and brunches

with friends, now and then;

hangouts, and dinners,

and dates, sprinkled in–

these balancing things

have been absent since March.

I lack PPE

for protecting my heart.

So, I’m tired. I’m not

giving up, but somehow

I have got to get through

the discomfort of now.

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Every day, I try to see through the patient lens, and I ask: what can we do to change this broken system?

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We Can Be Kind

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what gives

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An Impossible Choice

“It’s been more challenging than normal lately,” she said. “I’m only one person. It's a struggle for me to say no, but I can’t do everything that’s being asked of me right now.”