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In this essay, the author draws from The Brothers Karamazov, a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, to consider the idea of love and its relevance to burnout in modern medicine. They argue that active love, as espoused by one of Dostoevsky's characters, might help clinicians care for their patients even in moments of exhaustion or disillusion. Coherent with Dostoevsky's Christian background, the author examines active love alongside the Christian concept of grace and Simone Weil's concept of attention. These explorations may yield fresh insights for clinicians struggling with burnout in health care, as well as those striving to master the timeless art of caregiving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions of meaning may seem more properly suited to the spheres of religion or philosophy; yet physicians certainly witness some of the greatest sufferings of their patients' lives, and through this suffering, many patients look to their doctors not just for treatments but for answers. In this essay, the author highlights an exchange between patient and doctor in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, to argue that physicians need not have ready made answers about life, meaning, or spirituality, but should indeed provide comfort and support when their patients ask: "What's it all about?" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, the author examines a highly influential poem, The Age of Anxiety by W.H. Auden, for its engagement with anxiety and religious faith in the modern world. Published in 1947, the book-length poem reveals Auden’s deep understanding of western psychology, Judaism, and Christianity. The author argues for the relevance of The Age of Anxiety in this modern moment, but demonstrates that this relevance does not derive from any direct diagnostic or therapeutic implications of the poem. Rather, Auden’s work provides readers with an image of a state of grace in the middle of an age of anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What has instead gnawed at us is the moral tension of social distancing, of living life on Zoom while our instructors work nights on COVID-19 surge teams, lead hospital board meetings, and, every now and then, contract the virus themselves. Yet even after realizing that our personal timelines would go undisrupted, many medical students faced the same moral tensions of enjoying personal safety during our work-from-home remote learning while so many people suffered risks of contracting COVID-19 themselves. The conflation of the COVID-19 crisis and the anti-racism movement has motivated a greater urgency for medical students to reimagine the medicine on which we are embarked. [Extracted from the article]