Throughout my medical training, I vow to make an effort to actively pursue each patient's full story. To cleave only the fragments of their existence that anchor them to the hospital room leaves behind parts of our patients, invisible and abandoned.

Madeline Blatt reflects on the importance of imagining and investigating the version of the patient who lives outside of the hospital after being discharged.

The essay read in this episode was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the July 2025 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.