The Hospital Theatre: A Spoken Word Poem

This is in the poetry-slam kind of vein. Never heard of a poetry-slam? Watch this AMAZING kid from America.

Sometimes I feel like an imposter

When I don the stethoscope,

Put on the metaphorical white coat,

Go out and say

“Hi. My name’s Sarah. I’m a medical student.”

It feels like I’m just kidding myself

But out there front of house

The receptionists are checking referrals the way you check tickets to a show,

And I wonder

If I’m just the next generation of performer

To go out and convince you, the punter,

That I know what I’m doing.

It’s Shakespearean at times:

All of medicine is a stage

And every doctor, nurse, physio only a player

In this drama

That I’ve had to audition for.

I’ve learnt drug names

Like dance steps

To be waltzed into memory:

Sotalol

Propofol

Tramadol

Ethanol

Because, after all,

They call it a theatre for a reason.

But are we doctors just playing concerned?

Because we’ve been taught a script,

Been shown how not to trip

Over the awkward questions

And the odd proposition.

How to be exuberant,

Confident,

To connect with the audience

So they believe that we

Know how they’re feeling

Through the medium of empathy or

Sympathy.

We’re to gauge just how much physiology to tell you

 Depending on our private character study

Of you and your life,

Which we have reduced to pixels

On a screens before us.

And all the time I’m just screaming

That I really don’t know what I’m doing,

But internally of course

So as not to cause panic.

Those people –

The patients –

Are human,

And I hold their Faberge egg lives

In my tiny T-Rex hands

And I know that at some point

I will drop one.

And it doesn’t help that you look at me

With such admiration in your eyes.

Why do you think that I am going to be great?!

Why do you trust me

With your secrets and lies

The alternative lives

That your partner doesn’t even know about?

I am just a girl from Leigh.

I am nothing special.

I am only human too.

And there it is

The realisation

That this is meant to be a relationship of equals.

Both humans

Endowed with human error

And at times a lack of grace.

I will make mistakes

But then, so will you.

And it seems like theatre

But really it’s just life

And after all

All the world is a stage.

We are only people,

Mostly patient,

Human and identical

As far as possible.

And so I apologise in advance

For the slips

And trips,

The mistakes

And the times

I don’t quite understand.

And I realise

That you will come

With your stories

And lives,

And I will try

To treat you as humanely

As possible,

And not as a case study

Or a file on the computer screen before me.

 
(C) Sarah Ahmed