| This information is provided by the Wit Film Project. For more information please contact Jennifer Spooner at jennifer.spooner@med.va.gov or 310-478-3711 ext. 48353. |
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From Faculty
"Many students and housestaff are deeply energized by this play about Vivian Bearing’s experience of death and dying. "Wit" reminds us of the altruistic motivations that inspired us when we first entered medicine – the potential for physicians and other providers to be agents of comfort at times of personal suffering."
From Third and Fourth Year Medical Students
". . . [If] this is part of the curriculum we [should] consider this doctor-patient interaction as important as understanding the body."
"It’s really less about physicians and more about the independent patient and their needs. . . This isn’t really a play written by a physician for a physician. It’s a play written about the human experience of dying."
" . . . [For] the patient there’s hours of dead silence and then the doctor will come in for two seconds to talk to her and another hours of silence and pain and . . . you kind of tend to overlook that when you’re a doctor . . . . I think that’s effective in bringing some of . . . the subjective stuff that the patient goes through."
From First and Second Year Medical Students
". . . [The] majority of our time was spent talking about the play and I think that added so much more . . . it was a really key part for me to have that time to talk about and hear other people’s . . . perspectives . . . ."
"You can read as many journal articles as you can . . . but I think unless you actually have the chance to see the patient and actual patient stories, those are the kind of things that kind of allow [you] to grow and cultivate."
"I just kind of cringed, thinking of being in that situation just seemed so solitary so lonely and there was not friendship . . . there’s nothing, no support, except for Susie, and that is what stuck out most for me. I thought, wow, I might have to care for someone who is in this situation where they have no one."
From Residents
"I agree I think it’s far better than any lecture about it. Using a blackboard to try and teach you what it’s like for a patient to go through I don’t even think it compares."
"You try . . . to go in there and make the patient feel better . . . but it’s really hard to focus when you’re so busy and you know you’ve got patients rolling in . . . . [What] am I doing for them spiritually, it’s really hard to put that as a priority. It’s so easy to say you’ll do it later or whatever."
". . . [Who] can blame them because all you see is us rush in, in a big hurry in the morning and then we kind of leave and then sometimes come back and sometimes don’t . . . . You kind of get a perspective from the patient that we really don’t. . . . so I think it brings up some great ideas. . . ."
| This information is provided by the Wit Film Project. For more information please contact Jennifer Spooner at jennifer.spooner@med.va.gov or 310-478-3711 ext. 48353. |
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