Working with the Medical Humanities Initiative has been one of the highlights during my time as a resident

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Vinayak Jain (MWHC IM Residency ‘24)

Working with the Medical Humanities Initiative has been one of the highlights during my time as a resident. Having trained in the largest safety net hospital in DC, I’ve had the opportunity to serve patients facing not just complex medical illnesses, but also challenging socio-economic situations. Providing medical care to persons experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, linguistic barriers, uninsured or undocumented statuses has strengthened my belief on the need for medicine to address the structural barriers impacting our patients.

Consequently, my scholarly interests have been at the intersections of medical education and critical humanities. Under the mentorship of Dr. Krishnan, I completed an Editorial Fellowship with the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics, creating a theme issue on Critical Pedagogies in Health Professions Education. We worked with scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds (medicine, law, sociology, ethics, education) to create a toolkit for educators to incorporate structural determinants of health within their curricula, assessments & research. Based on this work, I had the opportunity to moderate workshops & panel discussions for other educators at the Center for New Design & Learning (CNDLS) at Georgetown, as well as the Innovation in Health Education Research (IHER) Conference at Medical College of Wisconsin. 

While these remain important professional milestones, this experience was transformative on a more personal level. It encouraged me to think deeply about our role as healthcare workers, educators and scholars. Stepping out of my comfort zone & collaborating with scholars from other disciplines has been a meaningful experience during my training as a resident.