“Unprecedented times.”
A phrase we’ve become all too familiar with in recent days. It peppered email inboxes and public broadcasts alike. Covid’s arrival to the US found me finishing up my career as a critical care nurse and preparing for Duke. The guilt of leaving a profession in dire need of bodies compounded my trepidation towards this major life transition amid the aforementioned “unprecedented times.” Matriculating into professional school in 2020 required adjustment. Adjustment of learning environment, yes, but more so an adjustment of expectations.
I spent long hours alone in my apartment, tethered by both my need to study and desire to limit Covid exposure. During one of these intervals, my email chimed with a message from the Interprofessional Education and Care (IPEC) Center. The email invited students from Duke’s various health care programs to participate in an elective called Moral Moments in Medicine, a course dedicated to the marriage of medicine and the humanities. I signed up for Plague Literature, one section of the many offered.
Over the next ten months, a group of Physician Assistant (PA), medical, nursing, and Physical Therapy (PT) students met to discuss literature influenced by sickness, plague, and death from pre-first century to the twenty-first. Led by a Russian Literature Professor/Hospice Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Radiation Oncologist with a Masters in Shakespeare, we mined these great works for the wisdom and insight they provided into times of widespread social upheaval, terror, and death. Discussions about the works provided me with a framework.
These times may be unprecedented in living memory, but immortalized by the printed word, the thoughts and reflections of those who came before serve as guideposts.
We face today what is common to humanity in times of plague. The challenges we navigate may look different, given the level of connectedness made possible by the internet, but humans faced these problems throughout history. The lessons embedded in these works served as an instruction manual for processing my experiences as an RN on the frontline and as a student at the forefront of virtual medical education.
Reflecting on my time in PA school during the pandemic era through Plague Literature and my own reading encourages a focus on the present. J.R.R. Tolkien’s words from The Fellowship of the Ring come to mind:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”1
How will I spend the time given me?
With the flexibility permitted by the didactic year’s schedule, Duke PA students dove into the community. While pandemic times affected volunteerism, students persisted and spent their precious free hours serving; whether through trail maintenance, Root Causes, blood and food drives, or vaccine clinics, the Duke Physician Assistant Program had a presence in the community. Now in my clinical year, I pass the hours in hospitals and clinics, wards and intensive care units, learning. Duke serves as a magnet for brilliant minds and talented clinicians; I try to absorb every ounce of knowledge and expertise they offer, developing the skills and building the knowledge base for my future career.
In his 1983 book Mister Rogers Talks With Parents, Fred Rogers wrote,
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”2
I look at my classmates, instructors, preceptors, and the various professionals I brush shoulders with every day. I look at them, and I see helpers.
Here we are. The times are precedented. All that’s left to decide is how we’ll spend them.
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Tolkien JRR. The Fellowship of the Ring. George Allen and Unwin; 1954.
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Rogers F, Head B. Mister Rogers Talks With Parents. Berkley Books; 1983.
Jess Harris is a second-year student with the Duke Physician Assistant Program. Email jessica.harris606@duke.edu with questions.
Editor’s note: Duke Physician Assistant Program students blog twice a month. Blogs represent the opinion of the author, not the Duke Physician Assistant Program, the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, or Duke University.