This past weekend, I took a poetry workshop through SCOSA – The Stockton Center on Successful Aging. They have a Tour of Poetry every second Saturday from 11am-1pm at the Otto Bruyns Library in Northfield. This was my first time attending.

I had been asked to lead the group in October, and I wanted to experience it as a participant first. Emari DiGiorgio, who coordinates these workshops, was facilitating. She asked us to introduce ourselves by using a metaphor for poetry in our lives.

The idea of making connections has come up again and again in my writing recently, so my metaphor for poetry was the synapses between neurons in my nervous system. In my physician life, the metaphor that came up was the comparison of my white doctor coat to the training wheels of a bicycle.

copyright: lenetstan

Let me explain. In November 2001, I did a Professional Training with the Center for Mind-Body Medicine. I learned skills to run Mind-Body Skills Groups for patients with chronic illness or for patients who wanted to maintain wellness. The leader of the training, Dr. James Gordon, was adamant that everyone practice the skills that they would be teaching.

Although I never began running these small groups, this is the one CME program that had the biggest effect on how I practice medicine, mostly by how it changed me as a person.  I became more self-aware, more self-observant.

Observing the Uniform

It was right around this time that I noticed that I felt more relaxed with my patients if I didn’t wear my white coat. I’m not sure exactly why I felt more stressed in my lab coat. Perhaps it related to the physical weight of the coat, with the pockets full of small reference books, a reflex hammer, a stethoscope.

Perhaps I perceived it as an unwanted barrier between me and my patients. Or, perhaps the white coat was analogous to training wheels. When I was young and inexperienced, I needed the coat to add gravitas, authority to my encounters.

As I got more experienced, and especially as my reputation grew in the hospital, I wore self-confidence, without the need for a heavy white coat. On especially bad days, I referred to the stethoscope and white coat as the trappings of being a doctor, because those were the days I felt trapped. I’m sure that for other clinicians, the white coat has different symbolism.

Symbolism of Color

My distaste for my coat is flavored by the fact that I don’t look good in white. Back in the 80s, when it was a fad to “have your colors done,” I discovered that I am a Summer. I look best in bright colors that lean toward the blue side of the color spectrum.

I like having an affinity with blue. Blue is the color of the throat chakra. My throat, my voice, is a source of healing to me, both through the resonance of my singing voice and through the expressiveness and creativity of my writing voice.

Question: How do the tools of your work make you feel? If you had to pick a metaphor for your work uniform, what would you pick? Leave a comment below and let me know.