Submit your work to a medical humanities journal

We are thrilled to open submissions for the 2026 issue of Stethos, the Medical Humanities Journal of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. In previous issues, Stethos has provided a fantastic forum to showcase the incredible diversity and creativity of our students, faculty, and colleagues, and we hope to continue this tradition in our 16th issue. We are seeking submissions of prose (short fiction, reflective writing, personal narrative, essays), poetry, artwork, and photography. Submissions may be about any medicine-related topic or reflection; if you have questions about a specific topic, please reach out to us and ask!

For this year's issue, we hope you will send us submissions inspired by the theme Resilience. We welcome submissions that speak to strength in the face of adversity, recovery and healing, working through hardship, or anything else that you feel inspired to share. Our deadline for submissions this year will be Saturday, March 14th, 2026. Please see below for specific submission guidelines.

If you would like to view examples of previously published pieces, please see the previous issue of Stethos: https://portal.cclcm.ccf.org/cclcm/cclcmdependencies/stethos/issue15.pdf 
 
Please feel free to contact our Editors-in-Chief, Patrick Potoczak (potoczp@ccf.org) and Mike Komarovsky (komarom2@ccf.org), or any of the Stethos editors (cclcmhumanities@gmail.com) with questions. We look forward to receiving your submissions!
 
All the best,
Stethos Editorial Team

Submission Guidelines

Please send submissions using our online form included with this notification.

• Up to four submissions per author; please send each submission on a separate form
• Prose should be less than 1500 words, submitted in Microsoft Word
• Poems should be less than 75 lines, submitted in Microsoft Word
• Submit all photographs and artwork as a jpeg file (we will contact you later for high-quality file format)
• All photographs and artwork must include a caption
• Please save the submission/illustration as the title (or abbreviated title) followed by the author's last name.
• For the article, "Generic" by Dr. Jones, save as follows:
• Generic_Jones.doc

For questions or issues regarding submissions, please contact us at cclcmhumanities@gmail.com.

Submit your work.

Review Process

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by a student-run editorial board consisting of co-editors and two editors-in-chief. The editorial board will review contributions for originality, style, and content.

Patient Consent/Confidentiality

Our confidentiality policy is based on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Please refer to this document with any questions about patient confidentiality (https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/index.html). As a rule, authors/artists should protect the confidentiality of all individuals whose personal details may be revealed without their consent.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

We will perform a holistic review of pieces modified or generated in part using artificial intelligence (AI). Please disclose whether and how AI was used in creating your piece through the submission form.