Literature and Medicine students
The centrality of narrative and language in the pursuit of medicine and healing is a theme in my Literature and Medicine seminar. When stories about the novel coronavirus emerged, I adjusted writing assignments so that students could engage with these emergent narratives.
What role is played by scientific/medical authority—and other kinds of competing authority—in disseminating scientific knowledge during such a time? What kinds of physicians’ narratives and patients’ stories were most powerful at a time when knowing how the virus is spread and affects the body—both the patient’s body and the social body—is literally a matter of life and death?
The students approached these questions in a variety of ways employing strands of the themes and issues discussed in the seminar. Some chose to write about the course texts themselves; others about new sources and mediums of information. —Uma Satyavolu
Healthcare providers
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1 day in the ER, a 6-minute video made by Craig Spencer, MD, MPH, who concludes the account of his day in the ER saying “I survived Ebola. I fear COVID-19," November 29, 2020 |
| The Epicenter: A Week Inside New York's Public Hospital—photographs by Philip Montgomery and test by Jonathan Mahler |
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State of Emergency—an ER doctor in New York writes “A Covid Diary: This is what I saw as the pandemic engulfed our hospitals," by Helen Ouyang with photographs by Philip Montgomery |
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Stanford University’s Talk Rx, a live storytelling series established in 2017, is going virtual during the pandemic. Clinical students from everywhere and from all health disciplines are invited to share their stories. Contact the organizers—Pablo Romano, a third-year medical student, and Medicine and the Muse Writer-in-Residence and Director of Writing and Storytelling, Laurel Braitman PhD—for details, or complete the form here. |
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A Shift on the Front Line by physician Silvia Castelletti, NEJM, April 9, 2020 |
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An ICU Nurse’s Coronavirus Diary by Simone Hannah-Clark, New York Times, April 5, 2020 |
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Clinicians Are 'Sent Into War With Pool Noodles,' ICU Doc Says, a conversation between Abraham Verghese, MD and ICU physician Angela J. Rogers, MD, MPH, podcast and transcript |
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Coronavirus in New York - Report From the Front Lines by Michelle N. Gong, MD, MS, Chief of Critical Care Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, at the center of planning for the surge of patients who will require mechanical ventilation and intensive care, a JAMA audio interview, March 23, 2020 |
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Pandemic Influenza Storybook—This collection of personal recollections was released by the CDC in 2008 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the 1918 flu pandemic. |
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A New York Doctor’s Warning: China warned Italy. Italy warned us. We didn’t listen. Now the onus is on the rest of America to listen to New York.—Emergency medicine physician Fred Milgrim in The Atlantic, March 27, 2020 |
Living and working with COVID-19
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Student Voice: 100 Argument Essays by Teens on Issues That Matter, an anthology from The New York Times Learning Network of essays written by 13-to-18-year-olds includes essays on COVID-19, edited by Katherine Schulten, 2020 |
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How Did I Catch the Coronavirus? by Carolyn Kormann recounts her experience having COVID-19 and constitutes a “parable revealing the limits of both contact tracing and preventive measures to avoid this “atmospheric threat.” |
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‘I Wish I Could Do Something for You,’ My Doctor Said—The day before this 33 year old woman became ill, she ran 3 miles, walked 10, and ran up 5 flights of stairs; a month later with lingering pneumonia, she still sleeps on her stomach and comments in this May 14, 2020 commentary that “many of my neighbors didn’t make it.” |
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A woman living alone: Seven stories of solitude during the coronavirus, from ages 24 to 86 by Caroline Kitchener with illustrations by Olivia Waller |
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How New Jersey’s First Coronavirus Patient Survived by Susan Dominus—the story of the first person in New Jersey to test positive for COVID-19 |
| My Whole Household Has COVID-19—Deborah Copakan in The Atlantic, March 27, 2020—Also, as a “public service announcement,” Copakan recorded her cough that might be said to speak for itself. |
| St. Mary’s College Student Came Home from Spain with COVID-19, NPR, March 30, 2020 |
| A pictorial narrative, 14 Days of Enforced Home Quarantine by artist Gareth Fuller |
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Wuhan Diaries
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| Swabs, STAT! Inside Puritan Medical Products Co., a narrative of the company producing the swabs the diagnostic testing requires, Bloomberg, March 25, 2020 |
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Reflecting on COVID-19—from the computer, from the head of the Center for Bioethics & Health Law, from the heart, March 24 – April 3, 2020 |
Archives and collections
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What Historians Will See When They Look Back on the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020 describes the efforts of various universities and other institutions to document people’s experiences of this pandemic. |
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The University of Pittsburgh Archives is creating an archive of the impact of COVID-19 on the Pitt community and the University’s response to the pandemic, and contributions are welcomed. |
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COVID-19 Diaries (and interviews) from around the globe, Luck-It, February 8, 2020 - present |
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A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of Covid 19, an archive established March 13, 2020 by Arizona State University historians in collaboration with a global network of scholars, described as “curating a pandemic” |