The Waiting Room: A Space for Self-Expression in the Pediatric Primary Care Setting.

Abstract

In The Poetics of Space , Gaston Bachelard1 characterizes the house as “one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind...Life begins well, it begins enclosed, protected, all warm in the bosom of the house.” As medical students, it was often difficult to feel a sense of belonging as we transitioned between rotations throughout our core clinical year. During this time of frequent change, we felt most at home in the Charles B. Rangel Community Health Center in Harlem (hereafter, Rangel), which provides care to a Medicaid-insured, predominantly African American and Hispanic population. As members of the Daniel Noyes Brown Scholars Program, a program within the medical school that seeks to expose students to primary care models and mentors, we were uniquely fortunate to enjoy a longitudinal experience at Rangel, making it a space where we felt safe and connected to the staff and patient community. We hoped to make the space that had become our professional home into an inviting and comfortable medical home for patients and families. When thinking about how best to enhance the medical home model, we thought it might be interesting to examine the physical design of the clinic itself because of our shared interest in narrative medicine and the therapeutic potential of art and architecture.2 Although the field of narrative medicine emphasizes the power of stories and the importance of listening in … Address correspondence to Anoushka A. Sinha, MD, MS, Pediatric Residency Training Program, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 630 W 168th St, CHN-517, New York, NY 10032. E-mail: as4531{at}cumc.columbia.edu