Bellevue literary review

Why Medicine Needs Literary Magazines

As we face a clinical landscape ever more automated by algorithms and artificial intelligence, it is even more imperative that we in medicine train ourselves to understand the metaphors that patients harness as they attempt to convey their inner experience to us; otherwise we will fall short on the diagnosis. We need to hone our skills to capture the story that the patient is living; otherwise our treatments may never fully succeed. I can’t say that a literary magazine is the perfect prescription for every ailment, but it covers a lot of ground. And it almost never causes dry mouth or palpitations. Except, of course, when it’s a page-turner. More