Why doctors need to study poetry

Ime Morales

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Every doctor must be very careful with the language he uses because words carry either the weight of despair, or the lightness of hope

WORDS HEAL. The good doctor holds on to hope and communicates it to his every patient. Graphic by Emil Mercado/Rappler.com

MANILA, Philippines – More than 10 years ago, I had a complicated stomach problem. I consulted a series of specialists and one doctor stood out from among them. He was one of the first few doctors I saw and after hearing me out on our first meeting, he minced no words: “It could be cancer.”

I was a young twenty-something, newly married, and I was being given this health forecast. My world and my dreams collapsed in the short time that it took him to utter those 4 words.

He recommended endoscopy as an initial diagnostic procedure after he made his dire prediction. Even if he used the word “could,” it still did not soften the blow. The doctor obviously didn’t know how to choose his words. There was a lack of compassion there, a disregard for the emotional and psychological well-being of the person sitting before him.

The language of physicians

Dr. Marjorie Evasco, a Filipino professor and poet, talked about the link between poetry and healing during a lecture held last February 24 in Fo Guang Shan Philippines. Dr. Evasco discussed the ancient links between the power of healing and poetry; modernization and the subsequent split between science and humanities, “relegating the softer arts to the margins;” and finally the upsurge of contemporary medical humanities programs in leading university hospitals all over the globe.

Medical doctors are now starting to learn from the works of literary masters, she said. These programs are bringing into the curriculum “courses that would teach medical students not only the science of medicine, but also its art.”

People are starting to realize that so much depends on how doctors use language in the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and healing of their patients. Every day, they are faced with so much pain, the possibility of death, hopelessness — daily realities that could anesthetize the best of them.

Dr. Evasco noted that “doctors need to have greater sensitivity to language, through imaginative word choice, so they could communicate effectively with patients, their families, and even their co-workers.”

This ability generates from kindness — plain and simple.

Doctors as poets

DOCTORS MUST BE CAREFUL WITH WORDS. Dr. Marjorie Evasco PhD sees a compassionate doctor as someone who understands that all of us, without exception, are future patients. Photo by Ime Morales

In her lecture, Dr. Evasco read several poems written by doctor-poets. Most of them were enrolled in her classes in De La Salle University Manila. She talked about their insights as they wrote about their experiences as medical practitioners.

Dr. Rafael Campo, who wrote the book “The Healing Art: A Doctor’s Black Bag of Poetry” (W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 2003), said that “Poetry puts us inside the experience of illness, demanding that we consider it from within.”

To this, Dr. Evasco said, “Poetry remains the one language that insists on embodying the whole.” It does not merely look at parts the way an insensitive doctor would regard his patient’s sick body part. “Poetry tries to understand the specific human experience in and through the language of the senses,” she said.

Dr. Alice Sun-Cua’s “Midwife” (poem from her 2002 publication “Charted Prophecies,” De La Salle University Press) is Dr. Evasco’s favorite in the collection. “It positions the doctor at the threshold of life and death,” Dr. Evasco said. Dr. Sun-Cua, she added, is a physician who believes that doctors must listen attentively to their patients.

Dr. Evasco also read the Filipino translation of Dr. Yves Tanael (an oncologist at the UP College of Medicine) of Dr. John Graham-Pole’s “The Pain,” a poem that talks about the pain of cancer. She talked about another oncologist from General Santos City, whom she met at a national writers’ workshop, Dr. Noel Pingoy, who said that he joined the writers’ workshop because “he wanted to write better in order to heal the constancy of death in his practice.”

A lot of medical schools do not offer training or courses to teach doctors how to break bad news.

Dr. Alfred Tan, a neurosurgeon at the UERM Medical Center, believes that a doctor’s capacity to heal lies in the alleviation of human suffering. This pertains to affliction of body, mind, and spirit, said Dr. Evasco. Every doctor must be very careful with the language he uses because words carry either the weight of despair, or the lightness of hope.

Dr. Evasco ended her talk with a short anecdote about anesthesiologist Dr. Rosario Cloma and how she managed to get through to a difficult patient and helped him face his fears.

The compassionate doctor

Watch Dr. Phil McGraw read a poem dedicated to the victims of the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting here:


“There are many doctors that pass judgment or diagnosis and have no qualms of withholding hope,” says Dr. Evasco. Apparently, the doctor I consulted was one of them. Fortunately, my illness “passed” and did not recur. (I tried seeking help from a kinder healer, Our Lady of Manaoag, and she did help me.)

Dr. Evasco sees a compassionate doctor as someone who understands that all of us, without exception, are future patients. The good doctor holds on to hope and communicates it to his every patient.

In their daily practice, despite all the suffering and death, it is still crucial that doctors try to help their patients counter their fears with an equally possible chance of healing. – Rappler.com


Ime Morales


Ime Morales is a freelance writer and the founder of the Freelance Writers’ Guild of the Philippines (FWGP) and Isang Bata, an independent organization that helps underprivileged Filipino children. Even if she is not a medical doctor, she took 9 units of poetry in UP Diliman as part of her MA program in Creative Writing.

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