The value of family medicine/general medicine lies in its distinctiveness from academic medicine. It replaced categories with process and relationships. In its scientific method, emotional experience plays an important role. General medicine is unique in the medical field because it transcends the mind-body duality. Therefore, general practitioners should be encouraged to use a non-conventional approach when addressing the problems that arise in the consultation. Fostering reflective practice is an integral part of continuing professional development and training in general practice. Poetry is a method of reflection that can allow physicians to reflect on concepts and experiences. Haiku is a form of traditional Japanese poetry. It consists of a short poem, generally composed of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively (although this meter is flexible, and in English, syllable count is based strictly on pronunciation, not spelling). It is unrhymed and aims to express, in just three lines, a brief and sincere feeling, usually arising from the contemplation of nature or from feelings about love, death, illness, pain, or any lived experience. Using haikus in medical education is an excellent resource for activating critical thinking and humanizing medicine. In the end, medicine and poetry share the same thing: the art of observing and listening attentively. In this article, an illustrative case is presented that gives rise to six haikus to reflect on the basic concept of family medicine of "Contextualization of clinical care."

General/family medicine is unique in the medical field because it transcends the mind-body duality. Therefore, general practitioners should be encouraged to use unconventional ways of acquiring knowledge. Poetry can be a source of knowledge by providing us with perspectives on reality, and in this sense, it can also have a cognitive impact on us and our understanding of the world. Science and poetry have more in common than most people realize. Both rely on metaphor, which is as crucial to scientific discovery as it is to lyrical description [1-3].

Haikus is a traditional Japanese form of poetry. Using haikus in medical education is an excellent resource for activating reflection on concepts and experiences, critical and ethical thinking, creative abilities, and the humanization of medicine. Because they are such short texts, they require students to fill in the gaps with their own clinical judgment. For students heavily focused on linear, detail-oriented facts haikus act as an outlet to stimulate creativity and process feelings encourage to identify the most salient features of difficult topics (such as the fundamental concepts of general medicine) and pair them with supporting scientific evidence; It is a beautiful project to use haiku writing to help students process the emotional weight of clinical care, explore practical challenges, and articulate the essence of health and illness (4-9). In this article, 6 haykus are used to reflect on “Contextualization of clinical care”, a basic concept of family medicine.

John, 72, diagnosed with severe heart failure, is readmitted due to fluid dehydration. Upon reviewing the electronic prescription, the treatment is perfectly prescribed. However, John is illiterate, lives alone in a remote rural area, and doesn't quite understand when he should take the diuretic if he goes out to buy it.

Haukus For Thought

Do not judge the leaf  without looking at the ground  where it has grown tall. The entire cure depends on their tight budget and their lonely roof. The illness itself does not happen in a void, it has a landscape. Tell me where it is that you lay your weary head every single dawn. The human framework that changes the bright colors of the suffering.

Not just the symptom, it is the house and sidewalk where they feel the pain.

Pedagogical Key

Cultural and socioeconomic relevance. An expensive drug or a change in diet cannot be prescribed without knowing the patient's reality.

Discussion Questions

The clinical guidelines say which drug to give, but who says how to adapt it to the patient's life? Is John a "non-adherent" or is it the system that doesn't adapt to his circumstances?

Concept Of Contextualization Of Clinical Care

"Context" refers to how biological mechanisms, clinical data, and environmental or social factors interact to influence disease. The clinical task of the family physician is to recognize that the common denominator of illness is that it occurs or arises in situations. There is no individual without context, nor context without individual. One creates the other and vice versa, and they co-evolve. Intervening on the individual (without considering the context) is not possible (it can only be done unconsciously or without proper information). The kind of information physicians need to understand people is subjective—it arises from the subjectivity of both the patient and the physician. Subjectivity becomes objective when it becomes an object of contextualization. To understand the diagnosis, coursem severity, prognosis and the full impact of a disease, (neurological, cardiological, etc.) on an individual, it is essential to consider the overall context [10-18].