Throughout winter quarter, the Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry has published short student-directed videos that reflect on the questions of how we care for ourselves and each other. The collection, "a series of small gestures," was inspired by UChicago's Smart Museum of Art exhibition Take Care.
For third-year Pritzker student Susan Feldt, this meant reflecting on the nature of learning clinical medicine during a pandemic. Her video "Kind Eyes," featuring fellow medical students from the Class of 2022, was featured as part of the series.
Of the project, Susan wrote:
"Taking care of patients looks different now. But as students who just started clinical work, pandemic healthcare is all we know. Before we enter a patient’s room, we put on our PPE and try to put down the weight of the work and the world. We do this because we are there to take care of them. But any relationship, even a provider-patient relationship, is in its nature reciprocal, a connection between two people. We can’t leave ourselves outside of the room, and through our PPE, they can still see us. Whether conscious or not, sometimes a patient says something that lifts a bit of that weight off. And that makes the next day easier. These are some of those stories."
Watch the video, and others in the series, here.