Many of the patients imaged in radiology departments each day spend time in a waiting room. Some, particularly those who return for multiple examinations, may become quite familiar with it. Yet the waiting room and the waiting room experience are not matters to which many radiologists have given much thought, in part because they are not addressed in the curricula of most medical schools and residency programs.
Radiologists and other radiology personnel who wish to provide the highest level of patient care need to see and understand the waiting room experience from the patient’s perspective. For one thing, the quality of this experience can strongly influence patient satisfaction. More important, understanding what patients go through before and after their imaging examinations can aid in providing more understanding and compassionate care.
One of the most highly regarded American poets of the mid-20th century, Randall Jarrell, offers deep insights into the patient’s perspective. His poem “The X-ray Waiting Room in the Hospital” was first published in 1963 . Although the imaging technology he describes is now dated, the underlying experience is much the same. In this article, we present a brief biographical portrait of Jarrell, reproduce the poem, and highlight many of Jarrell’s key insights on the waiting room experience.
Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1914 . He attended Vanderbilt University, where he edited the student humor magazine, served as captain of the tennis team, and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors, graduating magna cum laude in 1935. While there, he studied under the poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren. He went on to earn a master’s degree from Vanderbilt, then taught at Kenyon College and the University of Texas at Austin before leaving university life in 1942 to serve in the US Air Force. Many of his early poems drew on his experiences in the military, and his brief but powerful poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” is one of the most frequently anthologized works in 20th century American literature.
After his military service, Jarrell taught at Sarah Lawrence College and the University of North Carolina. He loved teaching. He once said, “If I were a rich man, I would pay to teach.” He was also a productive poet, author, and scholar. His literary output included nine books of poetry, five anthologies, four books of literary criticism, four children’s books, and translations of major works by Goethe and Chekhov. His literary criticism displayed his sharp sense of humor. He once wrote that another poet’s work gave the impression of “having been written on a typewriter by a typewritee.” He received many accolades and served an appointment as the poet laureate of the Library of Congress. In 1961, his collection A Woman at the Washington Zoo won the National Book Award.
Jarrell inspired great admiration and devotion from his friends and colleagues. His life ended abruptly in 1965, when he was struck by a car while walking beside a Chapel Hill road at dusk. His influence was summed up by two of his former roommates at Kenyon College, Peter Taylor and Robert Lowell. Taylor said, “To Randall’s friends there was always the feeling that he was their teacher. To Randall’s students there was always the feeling that he was their friend.” Said Lowell, “Now that he is gone, I see clearly that the spark of heaven really struck and irradiated the lines and being of my dear old friend—his noble, difficult, and beautiful soul.”
“The X-ray Waiting Room in the Hospital”
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I am dressed in my big shoes and wrinkled socks And one of the light blue, much-laundered smocks The men and women of this country wear. All of us miss our own underwear And the old days. These new, plain, mean Days of pain and care, this routine Misery has made us into cases, the one case The one doctor cures forever…the face The patients have in common hopes without hope For something outside the machine—its wife, Its husband—to burst in and hand it life; But when the door opens it’s another smock. It looks at us, we look at it. Our little flock Of blue-smocked sufferers, in naked equality, Longs for each nurse and doctor who goes by Well and dressed, to make friends with, single out the I That used to be, but we are indistinguishable. It is better to lie upon a table, A dye in my spine. The roentgenologist Introduces me to a kind man, a specialist In spines like mine; the lights go out, he rotates me. My myelogram is negative. This elates me, And I take off my smock in joy, put on My own pajamas, my own dressing gown, And ride back to my own room.
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Insights
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Conclusions
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References
1. Jarrell R.: The x-ray waiting room in the hospital.The Complete Poems.1969.Farrar, StrausNew York:
2. Burt S.: Randall Jarrell and His Age.2005.Columbia University PressNew York