Psychiatry was going to require all of me... To see the human body as more than machine. Yes, the heart is a pump, and our neurons entangle one another in electrical circuits. Medicine, however, transcends the physiological being.

Third-year medical student Riley Plett reflects on a transformative encounter with an Indigenous patient and learning that medicine requires much more than scientific aptitude.

This essay placed second in the 2023 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest and was published in the November 2023 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.