savoy096

A few days ago, when I was walking home for class, a man asked me for directions in Russian. I know that he was asking for directions, not because my Russian was sufficient to decipher his intention but because he was pointing to a tattered map. From what I could tell, he was looking to get to the post office, which was pretty much a straight. I tried to communicate that it was straight ahead in every way I could. I attempted in Hebrew. I attempted in English. I made a line with my finger on his map. I mimed a person walking forward and finding a post office. Nothing worked and with each attempt he looked progressively more frustrated. I also felt frustrated because I knew what he was going through and I was powerless to help. I too was a stranger in a strange place. I knew exactly what it was like to say the simplest thing over and over again and not see a look of understanding on the face of the person that I was talking to.           ...

            On Wednesday evening at 3:47, a typical first medical student rummages through her backpack, to prepare for her next class. She sits in the break room on the sixth floor of the internal medicine building at Soroka hospital. She takes out a biochemistry textbook and put it’s on the floor beside her backpack. She takes out some highlighters, flash cards, and a binder full of printed out slides from immunology lectures. She still hasn’t found what she is looking for. She pulls out a tutu and then continues to rummage until she finds a Santa hat.  “Finally”, she mumbles. It’s time for class.  Welcome to medical clowning. Meet Dr. Amnon Raviv, the only self-proclaimed only personal in the world to have a PHD in medical clowning. He is a clown, a real-word superhero, and the instructor of this very special course. He is a human sigh-of-relief for people battling serious illnesses all of the country. On any given day he can be found in an onc...

MSIH Physician's Oath Ceremony 2015 The fact of medicine as an institution has not been lost on any that have passed through its doors. The least of which are first year medical students, whose ambitions of practicing medicine have not yet been co-opted by the demanding processes of the education and the career. Our view of medicine is still one of reverence, the ideals of which don’t just sit propped on one mountain to be climbed, but on peaks and in valleys throughout an entire range of challenges. They remain there, revered, and in places of importance because we are the type that enjoys challenge. A good challenge, though, must be accompanied by its goal. Or some reminder of its goal. For me, this reality was the highlight of the master’s degree I completed shortly before coming to Israel. I studied business administration, the result of which is a ticket to business ownership or organizational management in some form. In one class we discussed whether or not management was a ...