Essay Required for the Medicine Clerkship

Each student in the Medicine clerkship is responsible for writing one formal essay to be submitted to the teaching attending and to the Department of Medicine (via email). The essay is due one week before the end of the clerkship.

The purpose of this exercise is to encourage development of narrative skills, which are so important, since all physicians must develop facility in synthesizing information into a logical and comprehensible story. We encourage students to think in broad terms, and to view medicine in its fullest context.
The essay should be based upon a brief case report, which could include the chief complaint, pertinent history, physical findings and laboratory results, formulation leading to diagnosis, and outcome. We recommend that this part of the essay be approximately six or seven lines, just to set the stage for your subsequent discussion.

The focus of the essay could be artistic, biological, chemical, economic, geographic, historical, literary, mathematical, mechanistic, metaphysical, ethical, humanistic or any other area of interest to you. The total length of the written work should be under 1,000 words. All essays should be in complete English sentences, except that poetry is possible. Reference citations should be ten or fewer. The essay must be the student’s original work.

Examples of the kinds of essays we expect can be found in the following books: The Lives of a Cell and The Youngest Science (by Lewis Thomas, MD), The Woods Hole Cantata (by Gerald Weissmann, MD), The Midnight Meal (by Jerome Lowenstein, MD), and On Doctoring (by Richard Reynolds, MD and John Stone, MD). Other examples of personal essays can be found in The Lancet, The Annals of Internal Medicine, and JAMA.

In evaluating the quality of the essay, we will assess logic, narrative flow, style, insight and clarity. Submission of an acceptable essay is a requirement for satisfactorily completing the medical clerkship.

We hope that you will enjoy this exercise, and that it will stimulate you to submit many manuscripts for publication in scientific journals during your professional career. At the end of each clerkship block, we will give up to five Awards for the best essays. These will be presented at a reception at the end of the clerkship. The award titles are:

• Clerkship Award For Outstanding Essay In Medical Humanism
  
• Clerkship Award For Outstanding Essay In Medical Science
  
• Clerkship Award For Outstanding Essay In Philosophy of Medicine
  
• Clerkship Award For Outstanding Essay In Pathophysiology of Disease
  
• Clerkship Award For Outstanding Essay In Creative Arts