{"id":1009,"date":"2017-11-02T07:17:34","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T07:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2023-11-15T15:24:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T15:24:42","slug":"it-will-make-a-fine-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/it-will-make-a-fine-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"It will make a fine hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I had overestimated<br \/>\nthe size of the square<br \/>\nin the middle of town<br \/>\nby quite a lot.<br \/>\nBut it was still big,<br \/>\nmore than big enough for a hospital.<br \/>\nTwo operating theatres,<br \/>\none of them in a truck!<br \/>\nan emergency room<br \/>\nand maybe eighty beds?<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019d have to take care<br \/>\nof the cars of course,<br \/>\noverturned, burned and unruly,<br \/>\nhere and there.<br \/>\nWe\u2019d have to check it<br \/>\nfor mines of course,<br \/>\nalthough I\u2019m pretty sure<br \/>\nI saw the children playing soccer here<br \/>\nthe other day.<br \/>\nWe\u2019d have to fence it off<br \/>\nof course,<br \/>\nor maybe a wall?<br \/>\nIt\u2019s so exposed,<br \/>\nand we\u2019re only ten kilometres from Mosul.<br \/>\nAnd maybe block off a few roads,<br \/>\nremove the chaotic tangle of<br \/>\ndowned power lines,<br \/>\nclean up the broken glass,<br \/>\nand the shattered remains of the surrounding houses.<br \/>\nThis square certainly saw some fighting.<\/p>\n<p>But other than that,<br \/>\nit will make a fine hospital.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Andrew Dimitri, <em>It will make a fine hospital<\/em>, by permission of the author.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Dimitri reads his poem here, and talks about the value of medical humanities (starts at 50s).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lBXNoqpsk6s?si=1cPxwbOk_OU8XF2a&amp;start=50\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>Commentary<\/h3>\n<p>Gently expressed, and successfully trivialises our everyday concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Dimitri is a respiratory physician in Sydney who has volunteered with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) since 2010. This poem describes experience in Mosul, Iraq. It was runner-up in the health professionals category of the Hippocrates poetry competition 2017.<\/p>\n<h3>Further info<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/hippocrates-poetry.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Hippocrates initiative for Poetry in Medicine<\/a> runs the annual Hippocrates Poetry competition. You can\u00a0 buy the book of winning and commended poems for 2017 and previous years on their website.<\/li>\n<li>The poem was also Poem of the Week in the Guardian in May 2017 &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/booksblog\/2017\/may\/29\/poem-of-the-week-it-will-make-a-fine-hospital-andrew-dimitri\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">read commentary<\/a><\/li>\n<li>About <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msf.org.uk\/find-roles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">volunteering with MSF<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msf.org.nz\/person-profile\/dr-andrew-dimitri\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Andrew Dimitri<\/a> (MSF profile). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msf.org\/en\/article\/mosul-patients-we-receive-are-%E2%80%9Clucky-ones%E2%80%9D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Patients we receive in Mosul<\/a> (MSF).<\/li>\n<li>The value to the health service of volunteering to work overseas was documented in a 2017 report <a href=\"https:\/\/rcpsg.ac.uk\/college\/influencing-healthcare\/policy\/global-citizenship#top\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Global Citizenship in the Scottish NHS<\/a> from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (RCPSG).<\/li>\n<li>Featured image: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:ISOF_APC_on_the_street_of_Mosul,_Northern_Iraq,_Western_Asia._16_November,_2016.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ISOF APC on the street of Mosul<\/a>, Northern Iraq, Nov 2016, by Mstyslav Chernov (Wikimedia Commons)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Contributed by<\/h3>\n<p>Neil Turner<\/p>\n<h3>Rate this post<\/h3>\n\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3>More like this<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I had overestimated the size of the square in the middle of town by quite a lot. But it was still big, more than big enough for a hospital. Two operating theatres, one of them in a truck! an emergency room and maybe eighty beds? We\u2019d have to take care of the cars of <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/it-will-make-a-fine-hospital\/\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":["default"],"wpupg_custom_link_nofollow":[],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"BlogPosting","footnotes":""},"categories":[68,5,2],"tags":[14,16],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-medicine","category-medicine","category-surgery","tag-poetry","tag-video"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":1,"sum_votes":5},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1650,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions\/1650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}