The Journey of a Medical Student: Stories from a 22-year-old Medical Humanities Journal

Medical education has been known to be emotionally taxing on medical students, with creative expressive outlets lacking.1,2 To address this, the University of California, Irvine medical students and faculty launched a medical humanities and arts journal, Plexus. For the past 22 years, Plexus has served as an outlet for students, physicians, faculty, and others in our medical community to create artworks and writings that express their thoughts, emotions, identities, and experiences. These creative pieces can be in the form of but not limited to prose, poetry, paintings, photographs, music, and dance. Drawing on five years (2017-2022) of Plexus contributions, we thematically analyze the ethical challenges as well as the importance and joys of community building. Our qualitative analysis focuses on contributions that capture the unique challenges and experiences between ideals and actions, compassion for self, the medical team, patients and their families in medical education. We then provide a more in depth evaluation of the 2022 Plexus publication, “Illuminate”, and discuss the joys and challenges of building a community that shares and embraces medical humanities. Our analysis presents the original works of medical students and professionals, with the purpose of demonstrating their creative reflections to immerse ourselves in the joys and challenges met throughout medical educational experiences. Oftentimes, our medical journeys can feel like a solitary endeavor, Plexus seeks to draw attention to these challenges and use this analysis to advocate for a nurturing community that allows space for creative reflection and to provide solace and support for each other.

Juliet McMullin – School of Medicine – UCI; Kenneth Schmitt – School of Medicine – UCI; Ashley Hope – USC School of Medicine