| 7:30 — 8:30 MERF Atrium |
Coffee |
| 8:30 — 9:45 session 4 MERF 2136 |
Exchanging the white coat for the gown: imagining ourselves in our patients' shoes Miriam LevineMiriam Levine is an Internal Medicine Resident Wayne State University School of Medicine. She hopes to pursue a career in academic medicine and in writing. Her lab coat is the one with the overstuffed pockets and yes, she really does need everything in them. Talents include the ability to peel her weight in potatoes and onions, and to run for a code in high heels. Her weapons of choice are the Panoptic ophthalmoscope, the Littman Cardio III stethoscope, and her matzo-ball soup of bi-continental fame. Miriam holds a BA in English Language and Literature from The University of Michigan. In 2004 she received an Underclassmen Hopwood Award, Fiction category, for a collection of three short stories., MD, Wayne State University School of MedicineFrancis Weld Peabody wrote, "One of the essential qualities of the physician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient." Part of caring for the patient involves understanding how her or she experiences the medical encounter. This workshop will take a unique perspective on medical narratives. Rather than writing about the caregiver experience, we will imagine ourselves in our patients’ shoes and translate that into writing as well as examine existing narratives. We will gain insight into the patient perspective and (hopefully) leave providing better care through increased understanding. Gain insight into the patient perspective through narrative role-play. Leave able to provide better patient care through increased understanding of what it feels like to be a patient. Discussion forum 50 standard is fine! Sunali Wadehra swadehra@med.wayne.edu MS Wayne State University School of Medicine Sunali Wadehra is a second-year medical student at Wayne State University School of Medicine. A bookworm at heart, she studied literature and anthropology in college at the University of Michigan and is now a member of her medical college's Writing Workshop, a group of medical students who meet monthly to write and discuss literature. She has a strong interest in entering the field of psychiatry and aspires to weave her love of the humanities into her future career as a physician. 2011-12-01 16:19:17 public 2012-01-04 14:16:41 David Etler 68.62.97.130 1 1Objectives: Participants will |
| 8:30 — 9:45 session 4 MERF 2117 |
Narrating Questions, Questioning the Narrative: Voices from Venice [Panel discussion] Luca CaldironiLuca Caldironi, MD, Psychyatrist, Psychoanalyst of the Italian Society of Psychoanalysis, I.P.A. Member, Teacher at the Martha Harris School of Psychoterapy (Tavistock Model) of Bologna. Private office in Modena and in Venezia, Italy, MD,Psychiatrist,Psychoanalyst of the Italian Society of Psychoanalysis, IPA member, Italian Society of Psychoanalysis , IPA member; Magda BoginMagda Bogin, novelist, translator and poet, former professor of writing at Columbia and Princeton universities and founder of Under the Volcano, a program of writing master classes that convenes each January in Mexico and also in cyberspace., M.A. comparative literature, www.underthevolcano.org; Maria Rosaria StabileMaria Rosaria Stabile, MD, Neurologist, Multiple Sclerosis Unit, Department of Neuro-Rehabilitation, IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, Lido di Venezia, Italy. Promoter of MN program in San Camillo Hospital, MD, Neurologist, IRCCS San Camillo Hospital; Francesca VanniniFrancesca Vannini, PhD, music-art therapist, IRCCS San Camillo Hospital , Dpt. Neuro-Rehabilitation, Lido di Venezia, Italy Promoter of MN program in San Camillo Hospital, PhD, Music-Art Therapist, IRCCS San Camillo HospitalAre medical narratives "therapeutic"? If so, how and for whom? What is given and what is received in the storytelling of medical narrative? We will present a multi-voiced conversation rooted in the narrative medicine program of the San Camillo Research and Intensive Rehabilitation Centre, a specialized hospital for acute and chronic neurological diseases in Venice, Italy. Along with two permanent staff members from the hospital, our panel includes a practicing psychoanalyst and an expert in the art of narrative. We plan to examine the creative process as activated by the various participants in a program. In our view, narrative medicine does far more than simply let someone "explore" the inner self, which of course is paramount with respect to patients: to map the terrain of the person who is both who one was before and who one becomes as the result of a health change. Working with patients who are living the experience of "chronicity" has led us to explore the meaning of time in relation to illness. Our work is grounded in the thinking of Wilfred R. Bion, with a focus on the terminological and semantic distinction he draws between "feeling" and "suffering" and between a "belief" and an "act of faith" (the capacity to 'contain' painful memories). This is not to engage in mere philosophical speculation, but to show the importance of these concepts within a deep transformative process that affects everyone involved. We believe that writing about illness both by people who 'suffer' as well as by health professionals and caregivers constitutes an important and necessary kind of thinking that adds to our 'body of knowledge' as human beings. For us, a critical part of the process of narrative medicine is to continue generating new questions that will reframe that knowledge as it develops.Objectives: Participants will explore from as many points of view as possible the needs of both patients and caregivers in the design of a narrative medicine program. Our conversation begins and ends with questions in order to demonstrate that process in action. |
| 8:30 — 9:45 session 4 MERF 1117 |
The Humanities and Nursing Education [Discussion forum] Gillian GrahamGillian Graham is a graduate of Columbia University's Program in Narrative Medicine and is currently working as a research assistant for the Program. She did her undergraduate work at the University of New Hampshire in English, and plans to attend nursing school to become a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner in the coming year., M.S. Narrative Medicine, Columbia UniversityNurse, poet, and essayist Cortney Davis writes of an illness experience that gave her a new perspective on how caregivers’ and patients’ experiences intertwine. She says, "For that terrible, suspended time of illness, patients sink into our care wholly and confidently. The intimacy between nurse and patient is carried through the "details of the flesh" to the heart of each. "Pay attention nurse! it says. What you do and who you are when you care for a patient is significant. Your presence etches a chapter into the story of each patients life." (The Heart’s Truth) Davis’ call to pay attention is inextricable from her ability to represent her experiences through writing. The depth, insight, and richness of nurse-writers speak to their ability to notice, to reflect, and to narrate their experiences, both clinical and personal. A survey of nursing narrative literature is itself an articulation of the importance of humanities programs that would allow nursing students to develop these capacities; yet there is a discrepancy between this theoretical recognition of importance and the practice of incorporating humanities into nursing curricula. This discussion forum will present preliminary findings from a study examining the presence of humanities coursework and extracurricular opportunities in nursing education, paying particular attention to the integration of literature, art, and writing at degree levels ranging from associate to masters.Objectives: Participants will learn about current initiatives at the intersection of the humanities and nursing education, and have a chance to examine and discuss the barriers to this integration. The discussion will draw on the richness of nurses’ narrative voice to highlight the potential for narrative education in nursing fields. |
| 8:30 — 9:45 session 4 MERF 2126 |
Mixing Up The Medicine [Discussion forum] Maureen MillerMaureen Miller is an MD-MPH student at New York University. She co-founded RapGenius.com in 2009 and occasionally reads and performs her written work at venues in New York City (Highline Ballroom, Caroline's on Broadway, among others). Her work has been published in McSweeney's, The Huffington Post, Gawker, and other online venues., B.A., New York University School of MedicineMedical schools have emphasized the centrality of the "patient narrative" in a humanistic education. The patient narrative may take many forms, from the short essay to theater to visual art and song. Yet American medical schools have paid little attention to references to medicine in popular music, and are inattentive in particular to descriptions of illness in hip-hop. Rap is now the predominant popular music form in the U.S. -- even more so than rock -- but is still considered outre in medical school classrooms. Considering the affinity between patients at American teaching hospitals populations with their local hip-hop artists, it may be beneficial for students to learn the ethnography of the neighborhood where they practice through the close study of rap lyrics. This case report will describe one student's effort to do so at New York University School of Medicine. RapGenius.com, a rap lyrics explanation website which aims to "critique rap as poetry," has created a new multimedia platform to integrate this information for educators. Using the architecture of a single rap song as a stand-in for the entire genre would be about as silly as trying to recreate "normal" human anatomy from the insides of a single cadaver. Learning the structure of many varieties of hip-hop lyric writing, which is more than a dialect to "translate," may therefore make students better at taking and interpreting medical histories.Objectives: Participants will hear a case study in medical humanism of the use of references to health care reform and the illness narrative in hip-hop lyrics. |
| 10:00 — 11:15 session 5 MERF 2117 |
Take two poems and call me in the morning: What is the role of the arts and humanities in medical education? [Panel discussion] Andrew BaumgartnerI am a second year medical student at UNMC. I studied philosophy during my undergraduate years, and I am particularly interested in aesthetics and ethics in medicine., BS, University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Medicine; Rachel HammerRachel Hammer is on an intercession from her third year as a medical student at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine to pursue a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction through Seattle Pacific University. She leads a student interest group in humanities at the medical school., BS, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine; Bryan Siskis a medical student at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine (CCLCM), where he is pursuing a career in academic pediatric medicine. His undergraduate training was in biochemistry at the University of Missouri—Columbia, where he met his wife. He is an avid musician and writer, and is the author of the recently published book "A Lasting Effect: Reflections on Music and Medicine," which highlights his experiences playing guitar for sick children in the hospital. Additionally, he is the founder of “Stethos: Medical Humanities Journal of CCLCM”, and he continues to serve as editor for this journal. His prose and poetry has been published in several humanities journals, including The Examined Life, Hektoen International, Yale Journal for the Humanities in Medicine, Burning Word, Texas Heart Institute Journal – “Peabody’s Corner” (forthcoming), and Stethos. He is currently recording music for his solo acoustic album that is due out later this year., BS, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University; Jason T. LewisJason T. Lewis was born in West Virginia. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His writing has appeared in Yemassee, Connotation Press, LittleVillage, and Tape Op. His story "Heroic Measures" was published as an ebook single by Boxfire press. His essay about his time in the Iowa Writer’s Workshop was featured in Word By Word, a celebration of the Workshop’s 75th anniversary. His first novel, The Fourteenth Colony: a novel with music, was published in November 2011 with a companion album of songs written by Jason in the voice of the protagonist. Jason is the director of the Carver College of Medicine's Writing and Humanities Program, managing editor of The Examined Life: A Literary Journal of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, and co-director of the Humanities Distinction Track. A singer, songwriter, and producer for nearly 25 years, Jason has released four albums of original material, first with his group, Star City, and most recently with Sad Iron Music., MFA, University of Iowa Carver College of MedicinePanelists including students, educators and medical practitioners will discuss the increased attention the arts have garnered in medical education and the healthcare system and examine the merits, and possibly the negatives, of this attention.Objectives: Participants will explore a better understanding of the arts and humanities as they impact and perhaps enhance the practice of medicine. |
| 10:00 — 11:15 session 5 MERF 2126 Capacity: 20 participants |
Narrative Coherence: The Art of Writing Clinical Notes and Consultation Reports that Transform Care [Workshop] Kristin BresnanDr. Bresnan is board certified in Family Medicine and Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She currently practices full time as a Palliative Medicine consulting physician in an 800 bed hospital, and is the supervising physician to a home-based, nurse practitioner-led outpatient palliative care practice. Her areas of focus include patient and relationship centered care, healing relationships in health care settings, and reflective practices to increase provider resilience. Her work includes teaching medical students, residents, and fellows., MD, Lehigh Valley Health NetworkThis workshop will offer clinically-oriented providers the opportunity to experiment with the use of narrative, descriptive, and structural techniques within clinical documentation that enhance "narrative coherence" - that is, the ability to write notes that allow a reader to understand the full arc of a patients story, from a biomedical, psychosocial, emotional and spiritual perspective. After a brief overview of basic precepts of palliative care, including assessment of "total pain", and the way that palliative care is using narrative techniques to transform clinical practice in hospital settings, we will have a workshop that will involve a patient-provider interview role play using a loose interview structure called "The Five Key Questions", followed by an opportunity to write a sample clinical note based on the interview. We will then read and reflect on each others written work and observations. We will end with an overview of key learnings and resources for further work.Objectives: Participants will learn new tools that improve patient care and relieve suffering through writing clinical notes that demonstrate narrative coherence. |
| 10:00 — 11:15 session 5 MERF 2136 |
Poetry and Medicine: Sonnets of Love and Grief [Discussion forum] Serena J FoxSerena J. Fox is an intensive care physician, consultant in bedside medical ethics and human rights advocate. Her career was launched in the emergency room of Bellevue Hospital (NYC). It continued in ICU’s and trauma units in Washington, DC and recently returned to NYC. She believes deeply that poetry and the Humanities have essential roles in the teaching of medicine and care-giving. Her poems have appeared in the Paris Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Western Humanities Review. Her book of poems, Night Shift, is the basis for a series of poetry and medicine seminars that she facilitates in the NYU School of Medicine Master Scholars Program for Humanities in Medicine., MD, Beth Israel Medical Center and NYU School of Medicine"Time does not bring relief; you all have lied/Who told me time would ease me of my pain!" These opening lines of a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay catapult us into the realm of love and grief so deftly that they have haunted and soothed me from the moment I first read them. I have sent this sonnet with love and trepidation to people about whom I care and to whom I hope to offer comfort when words fail me. I confess, I have fallen in love with the compact, 14-line sonnet form. It resonates for me especially in my professional world of acute care medicine where extremes of life and death can swing so precariously in brief amounts of time. This workshop is intended to give protected time and space to sonnet-lovers and the sonnet-curious. We will share the physical experience of reading and listening to sonnets and the intellectual joy of examining a few up close. Each willing participant will bring a sonnet (adherent to the classical form, if possible) that he/she loves, has recently discovered or has written him/herself. We will share these in the first half of the workshop. The second half will be devoted to a small group of sonnets and questions of craft. We will also consider how the sonnet form might relate to the medical experience.Objectives: Participants will deepen their appreciation and experience of this form, with a particular focus on sonnets that grapple with love and grief; read and listen to sonnets they bring in and share in the workshop; review briefly the history and structure of the sonnet (mostly English-language); examine a selection of five or six sonnets that address love and/or grief and discuss how they achieve a world of emotional experience in 14 lines. |
| 11:15 — 12:30 MERF Atrium |
Poster Session/Book and Information Fair Share your work with your colleagues, and display your books and materials. Register here. |
| 11:45 — 12:30 MERF Atrium |
Lunch |
| 12:45 — 2:15 MERF 2117 |
What Literature Can Do For Medicine [Featured Presentation] David WattsDavid Watts is a gastroenterologist at the UCSF School of Medicine, a poet, a classically trained musician, a television producer/host and occasional NPR commentator. Seven books of his poetry have been published (two under his avant-garde pseudonym), along with two books of short stories (Random House and U. Iowa Press). He has been selected as one of America’s Best Doctors by three separate organizations, has invented the Third Eye Retroscope manufactured by Avantis Medical Equipment Company of Sunnyvale, California and has organized and leads a summer writing workshop, The Healing Art of Writing, for those committed to the subject of illness and healing. His jazz-poetry ensemble, Free Radicals, just released its new CD., MDThere can be little argument as to the value of literature in our lives. But I will argue that its richness is only beginning to be appreciated as important to the education and sustenance of medical professionals and its potential is vastly underutilized. Beginning with what is lacking in the training and behaviors of medical professionals we will build a case that poems and stories are an integral part of the medical experience and are an important tool for releasing our potential to operate at our fullest as comforters and healers. |
| 2:15 — 3:30 session 6 MERF 2126 Capacity: 20 participants |
Writing health: living, dying, and working in and through narrative ethics [Workshop] Rebecca BamfordRebecca Bamford teaches philosophy at the University of Minnesota Rochester. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Durham University. Before coming to UMR, she was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy at Rhodes University, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University, and she taught philosophy and interdisciplinary human studies at the universities of Durham, Bradford, Rhodes, Emory, and Hunter College of the City University of New York. Her current research explores questions arising at the intersections between modern European philosophy, ethics, contemporary philosophy of mind and science, comparative philosophy, aesthetics, and literature. She has published numerous articles on biomedical ethics, on science, including recent articles on ooctye donation and on cultural diversity in bioethics. She is co-authoring a book on ethics that will be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2013, and is writing a second monograph on modern European philosophy and problems in the philosophy of mind and science that will be published by de Gruyter in 2014., Ph.D., University of Minnesota Rochester; Bronson LemerBronson Lemer is a creative writer, journalist, editor, and teacher. He spent six years as a carpenter with the North Dakota Army National Guard, including deployments to Kosovo and Iraq. His experiences in Iraq are the basis for his memoir The Last Deployment. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in mass communications and English from Minnesota State University Moorhead and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His creative writing has appeared in The Reykjavik Grapevine, Blue Earth Review, and Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers. He has taught English in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Korea, China, and on board a U.S. Navy guided-missile carrier. He is currently teaching at the University of Minnesota Rochester., M.F.A., University of Minnesota Rochester; Cameron BrewerCameron D. Brewer teaches philosophy at the University of Minnesota Rochester. He is also a doctoral candidate in the philosophy program at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His dissertation focuses on Kant's notion of material substance as a response to Hume. He also works on ethics, and has published on the ethics of drug rationing., M.A., University of Minnesota RochesterNarrative ethicists use stories to help negotiate, and to learn from, life. Our interactive workshop explores encounters with concepts of living, dying, and working through writing, focusing on the theme of health, broadly conceived. We begin with short presentations on these themes involving undergraduate students and faculty members in a health sciences undergraduate program. These presentations combine a narrative approach with philosophical analysis in order to engage with the challenges of health-related professional contexts through writing. This is followed by a short dialog, comprising a reading on living, dying and working from Bronson Lemer's recent book, The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq, and a philosophical reply to Lemer's narrative. Workshop participants will then have an opportunity to engage in a short writing exercise in narrative ethics, and to share their work.Objectives: Participants will engage in an interactive narrative ethics workshop, produce some creative writing, and share their work with presenters. |
| 2:15 — 3:30 session 6 MERF 2156 |
Nolan/Joy Jacobson Panel [Panel discussion] Margaret NolanMaggie is currently finishing her 4th year of medical school at the University of Chicago and pursuing a career in Family Medicine. She studied English Literature and creative writing in college and hopes to continue finding ways to intertwine literature and medicine for years to come., MS, University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine; Joy JacobsonJoy Jacobson is a poet, a medical editor, and a health care journalist. She is the poet-in-residence at the Center for Health, Media, and Policy at Hunter College in New York City, where she teaches writing to nurses and nursing students and blogs on poetry related to illness. She holds an MFA in poetry from the New School and was, for nearly ten years, the managing editor of the American Journal of Nursing. Her poems and essays have appeared in Smartish Pace, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cerise Press, and elsewhere., MFA, Center for Health, Media & Policy, Hunter CollegeTBDObjectives: Participants will TBD |
| 2:15 — 3:30 session 6 CBRB 1289 Capacity: 25 participants |
Empathy: why should I care? [Discussion forum] Brittany BettendorfBrittany Bettendorf is a resident in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) in Milwaukee. She is also a resident associate in the MCW Medical Humanities Program., MD, Medical College of Wisconsin; Michael FarrellMichael Farrell is Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Bioethics & Medical Humanities at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, USA., MD, Medical College of Wisconsin; Julia UihleinJulia Uihlein is the Associate Director of the Program for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the Medical College of Wisconsin and an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities and the Pediatrics Institute for Health and Society at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, USA., MA, Medical College of WisconsinIn order to maintain a healing partnership with patients, physicians must possess empathy. Students have been shown to experience a significant decline in empathy during medical school, with the greatest change in the first and third years. This workshop will begin with all attendees privately completing a validated survey tool measuring their own empathy, to encourage participants to be personally aware of their own level of empathy. We will then report the results of a pilot project we conducted to investigate whether making regular voluntary journal entries would help third-year medical students maintain their baseline empathy. We will use the results of our project to foster a discussion amongst session attendees about the value of empathy amongst medical professionals and ways to combat its decline during medical practice. Finally, as a group, we will brainstorm ways to maintain empathy in medical education and promote reflective practice amongst developing physicians.Objectives: Participants will understand the value of empathy in the patient-doctor interaction and the importance of developing a reflective practice; develop awareness of the pattern of decline in empathy shown to occur during medical school; predict and measure their own empathy levels using a validated survey tool; understand the results of a small pilot project done to assess the effect of journaling on empathy levels in third year medical students; engage in conversation about empathy in medicine, sharing and listening to the stories of others |
| 2:15 — 3:30 session 6 MERF 2117 |
CrAzYToWn: Free-Range Storytelling vs. McWorld [Performance Piece] Jude Treder-WolffJude Treder-Wolff, LCSW, RMT, CGP of Lifestage, Inc, is a psychotherapist /creative arts therapist and writer/performer who uses life writing, improvisation and storytelling as pathways to self-awareness, healing and to find strength in struggle. She performs solo shows at theaters and clubs in New York City and around the country, and is presently touring CrAzYToWn, an autobiographical show about experiences that shaped and changed her role as a psychotherapist. She performs at venues as diverse as The Charles B. Wang Center at Stonybrook University, New York Comedy Club, Stand-Up New York and the Laurie Beechman Theater in New York, ArtSpace in Santa Fe, NM and Ovations in Houston Texas. Recent presentations at national conferences include The Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, Association for Medical Education & Research in Substance Abuse, American Creativity Association, and Applied Improvisation Network. Her academic articles are published in The International Journal of Arts In Psychotherapy and Music Therapy Perspectives, she has published numerous articles for newsletters and websites and writes for Examiner.com., Masters in Social Work, Lifestage, Inc; Crazytown is written and performed by a woman who spent 25 years in a small room listening to all sorts of people talk about Very Painful Things, and who now talks about Various Kinds of Crazy to any group or audience that will show up to listen. Characters include Sister Jude of the Impossible Situations, Dorothy the Manic Yenta, Linda the Passive-Aggressive Psych Nurse, and Brenda the Sleeping Psychiatrist. Topics include crazy love, crazy working conditions, crazy experiences in what we think of as "normal' life. And it raises the question, is there really such a thing as an "ordinary moment." Original songs for this show were co-written with musical director Wells Hanley, MA, Professor of Jazz Piano at the University of Virgina, with whom Treder-Wolff has collaborated on creativity and improvisation workshops, shows and music for the past 10 years. Objectives: Participants will laugh; be entertained and engaged in an unrepeatable, live storytelling experience; connect with characters and themes related to healing, self-development and the creative process; examine the craft of organizing details of true stories to maximize the expression of an evolving point of view. |
| 3:45 — 5:00 session 7 CBRB 1289 (Kelch Conference Room) |
Getting Our Hands Dirty: Journals, Easels, Scalpels [Discussion forum] Kelli AuerbachKelli Auerbach's specialty is bridging medicine with creative writing and visual art. She holds a degree in Cultural Studies of Medicine from Brown University and an MFA in Fiction from Brown as well. Kelli has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Brown, CalArts, University of Cape Town and USC Keck School of Medicine. She has presented papers and workshops at the symposium Make It Better: A Conversation on Art, Design, and the Future of Healthcare, the &Now Literary Festival, and the Innovations in Medical Education conference. Her article, “Beyond Comfort Zones: an experiment in medical and art education,” co-written with Dr. Jay Baruch, was recently published in Journal for Learning Through the Arts. Her short stories have appeared in 3rd Bed and Encyclopedia and she just completed The Owl House: a novel. Kelli has received numerous honors including a Fulbright to South Africa, fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, and a grant from the Mutter Museum/College of Physicians Library to research her next novel., MFA, Brown University, Independent ScholarMedicine is a fascinating, straddling beast. One foot rooted in hard science, the other in the murkier ambiguities of human interaction. To be an effective doctor requires a breadth of scientific knowledge, yet it also requires less quantifiable skills: razor-sharp listening, expansive thinking, imagination, and the ability to maneuver through uncertainty – skills that are the hallmarks of visual art and creative writing. For the past few years I have been developing courses that use art and writing pedagogies to rethink medical education. In 2010 I co-taught a new experimental course with Dr. Jay Baruch that joined art students from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and medical students from Brown University for a semester-long engagement with art and medicine via the lens of literary craft. I have also taught fiction workshops to physicians, medicine-based courses at CalArts, and an art and writing elective at USC Keck School of Medicine. Rather than study art and literature from a distance, students in these courses are required to get their hands dirty: to make art, and write stories, from the inside out. The experiential nature of these activities imparts a deeper understanding of detail, subtext, dialogue, character development and narrative tension, as well as the ways such literary techniques translate into the medical realm. The results: stronger perceptive and interpretive abilities when attending to the complex needs of patients, and greater fluency with the ambiguities that regularly present themselves in clinical contexts. This presentation will begin with a discussion of hybrid art/writing/medicine coursework, followed by a workshop in which attendees will participate in a series of creative writing exercises that have direct relevance to clinical practice.Objectives: Participants will receive a detailed overview of the RISD/Brown course (the first of its kind to bring art and medical students together in this particular way); discuss new ways that art and creative writing techniques can impact medical education; participate in a series of creative writing exercises. |
| 3:45 — 5:00 session 7 MERF 2136 |
The Landscape of Illness: Meeting the Needs of Patients in the Writing Workshop [Discussion forum] Sara BakerSara Baker is a novelist, short story writer and poet. Her stories have been published in or are forthcoming in The Examined Life, The Chattahoochee Review, The New Quarterly, The Spirit that Moves Us, The Habersham Review, The Lullwater Review and other publications. Her poetry has appeared in The Healing Muse, Ars Medica, The Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine, The Journal of Poetry Therapy and elsewhere. Her dramatic work has been produced by NPR and BBC, and she has written two novels. Sara holds a Masters degree from Boston College. She has taught English at the University of Georgia, The Georgia Institute of Technology, and Piedmont College Her own journey with chronic illness has led her to create the Woven Dialog Workshops, writing workshops that aid in facilitating the healing process. She blogs about writing and healing at Word Medicine, www.saratbaker.wordpress.com., MA English, Loran Smith Center for Cancer SupportAs writing facilitators, we are tasked with creating safety and efficacy for people who are often quite vulnerable. How can we do this? One way is to understand better the topography of illness: the stages of illness, the attendant emotions, and the available narratives. Cancer will be the model, but the principles presented hold true for any serious illness. Based largely on the work of Arthur Frank(At The Will of The Body, The Wounded Storyteller), this presentation's goal is to allow participants to a) learn to listen more actively to patient texts, b) prepare for emotions that may be expressed, c) provide tools for structuring safe writing experiences and avoiding re-traumatization.Objectives: Participants will have a clearer understanding of the inner landscape of vulnerable patients, their specific needs and emotions. They will also come away with tools for creating safety. |
| 3:45 — 5:00 session 7 MERF 2117 |
Rites of Passage: Residents Write Medicine [Discussion forum] Nancy GrossA long time faculty member at the City University of New York [CUNY], Nancy followed her passion to work in a clinical setting with patients and families facing life limiting illness. Tooled with a new degree in the medical humanities, Nancy embarked on her encore career. Facing the learning curve of adjusting to hospital culture, Nancy's talents as a pedagogue emerged, and she has created a niche at a busy community hospital as the go-to house narrativist. Nancy leads Literature and Medicine seminars, developed and facilitates the humanities program in internal medicine, runs narrative groups for specific patient and family populations and inaugurated and supports an annual humanistic medicine symposium. As Palliative Care Community Liaison and Humanities Educator at Overlook Medical Center in New Jersey, her encore career is vibrant and fulfilling., MA, MMH, Overlook Medical C/Atlantic Health System. . . As easily as I took off my proverbial white coat, I now put it back on. I grabbed my stethoscope and listened to her chest, looked at her ashen body and checked her tracheostomy tube. I was ready to leave, about to say goodbye, when the old man stood up and offered me his hand. "Thank you very much; you helped me a lot." I was stunned, feeling guilty I could do more no more to help his wife. I left, not wanting to think about how he was going to cope with the next few hours and days. Walking away, I realized this was the best medicine I practiced all day. Huestein Sy, PGY1 A first year resident, feeling smug during his ICU shift, has an unexpected connection with a dying woman’s husband. Our resident reflects on this moment, writes and shares his insights with his peers and faculty. An oasis in his hectic day, he is asked to take a moment to think about the medicine he practices. Between theory and praxis, Internal Medicine residents write regularly in community. Whether at monthly narrative conferences, parallel chart sessions, on-the- spot 55 word stories, humanities conferences or whenever inspired, writing has become an integral part of the training experience. Inspired by the chief of medicine and led by a humanities educator, residents are connecting with themselves, their colleagues and their patients to support mindful doctoring. This session addresses the challenges and accomplishments of narrative work. Included is discussion of pedagogy, sample literary texts, writing prompts and how narratives are shared within the program and beyond. Most importantly, residents talk about the impact narrative has had upon their residency. Residents will read from their work, sharing the exploration of their evolving growth and development as physicians.Objectives: Participants will understand the challenges and benefits of narrative writing during residency. |
| 3:45 — 5:00 session 7 MERF 2126 Capacity: 25 particpants |
Anton's Mistress: Crafting your Portfolio Career in Writing [Workshop] Carolyn Roy-BornsteinI am a pediatrician and a published and award-winning writer. I write a health column for parents. My essays and book reviews have been published in JAMA, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, The Writer, Brain,Child, Literary Mama, the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and others. My clinical work and conference coverage has appeared in Pediatrics, Pediatrics in Review, the American Medical Writers Association Journal and others. My fiction has appeared in The Examined Life, the Charles River Review, and Hospital Drive and won third place in the 2005 Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition. I also write book reviews, blog, and teach personal essay-writing. My new memoir CRASH! is being published by Globe Pequot Press and is due out in October of 2012. I speak to civic groups, colleges and businesses about under-age drinking and drunk-driving. I am addressing the Annual Trauma Care Symposium at the Lahey Clinic this fall. I was the Keynote Speaker last fall at the Brain Injury of Massachusetts’ Annual Conference., MD, Physician, Writer, MomPortfolio careers, which combine one’s main work with one or several side interests, have been around since the 19th century when physician Anton Chekov wrote his first short story. (He famously said, "Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress," hence, the title of my workshop.) Doctors today can maintain work-life balance, increase personal and job satisfaction and enrich their skill set with a portfolio career. In a profession prone to burn-out, a portfolio career can keep work challenging and interesting. Objectives: This one-hour-long workshop will include: • A definition and history of the portfolio career • The joys and rewards of writing • How to get started locally • Examples of medical writing you can do right now • Paying venues for placing your work • Starting a medical blog • Finding a niche • Where to find classes, writing groups and support • A quick, fun writing exercise that will show the audience that they all have stories and can all be writersObjectives: Participants will learn the definition and history of the portfolio career and become familiar with the rewards of a portfolio career in writing; understand how to get started writing medically-themed blogs, columns, essays, fiction, book reviews and more; and learn about paying venues for placing their written pieces. |
| 6:00 — 8:00 Main Library Shambaugh Auditorium Presented by the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine Writing and Humanities Program and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Open to the public. |
The Doctor of Starlight [Keynote Presentation] Philip LevinePhilip Levine was born in Detroit in 1928, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, and educated at Wayne University (now Wayne State), the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Stanford University. He is the author of twenty collections of poetry, and his honors include the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, and two National Book Critic Circle Awards. He is the current United States Poet Laureate., MFA, United States Poet Laureate |
| 8:00 — 10:00 Hotel Vetro Conference Center, 201 South Linn Street, Downtown Iowa City |
Reception |