Khalilah Taylor
Professor Rivkin-Fish & Professor Thrailkill
ANTH 272
26 January 2020
Reading Response #1: Into the Water
“Into the Water – The Clinical Clerkships” by Katharine Treadway and Neal Chatterjee at first seemed to be an article simply discussing the lack of empathy physicians and other medical professionals possess. However, after analyzing the article and considering the alternating perspectives, tones, and shared experiences between the clinician (Katharine) and a medical student (Neal)the true symbolism of water and its connotations are made apparent.
As this article starts off, the narrator, Neal, puts readers in the perspective of a medical student during his first day of surgical clerkship. Placing us in the unnatural hospital setting and his shared uneasiness when residents discussed tragic events in a comedic manner with his readers, helps us understand the warped emotional connection between physicians and patients. Such degradation is made clear through the anecdote of the fish in the water. Because the fish experience water every day, the water has become more normalized as the residents in this environment have become more desensitized. It’s not that Neal on his first day is experiencing abnormal feelings but rather, everyone else has become unphased by the reality of the medical world. Katherine shares, in a complementary viewpoint, that the neglect physicians show their students is what makes the students numb.
These parallel perspectives reveal how we, as humans, tend to disconnect from our true emotions and feelings in order to get through the harder parts of our lives and by doing so in silence, we encourage others to do the same. The pragmatic and philosophical tone presented in this text helps us understand that acknowledging the presence of water is of true importance. Along with acknowledging, addressing exactly how we deal with the events that cause heightened emotions is a solution that is presented in order to prevent denormalization of numbness in both the medical field and life as a whole.
Work cited
Treadway, Katharine, and Neal Chatterjee. Into the Water — The Clinical Clerkships. The New England Journal of Medicine, 31 Mar. 2011