From the Division of Medical Humanities at NYU Langone Health and the Gold Foundation

A History of Art in Hospitals

Research has shown that artwork is not only an emotional balm to patients, but may have health benefits as well. In this feature, art historian Anne Wallentine takes readers through centuries to highlight the role of art in hospitals and other healthcare spaces.

Continue reading in Wellcome Collection

Image credit: World War I: a ward in the London Hospital in which a nurse tends a soldier's arm while other soldiers lie in bed. Oil painting after Sir J. Lavery. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Defunding liberal arts is dangerous for health care

"If you want an argument in favor of teaching the humanities, I suggest you ask a medical educator," writes Holly J. Humphrey in this recent opinion piece that outlines how the liberal arts can help trainees and healthcare professionals build skills that prepare them to better care for patients.

Continue reading in STAT

“Illness Calls for Stories”: Care, Communication, and Community in the COVID-19 Patient Narrative

Rosalind Crocker examines how epidemics have been recorded throughout history, with a focus on how personal stories — including tweets, texts, and videos — form a collective narrative of the illness experience.

Continue reading in Journal of Medical Humanities

The art of equity: critical health humanities in practice

Irène P. Mathieu & Benjamin J. Martin explore the field of critical health humanities, which brings the health humanities into conversation with social justice and health equity. Their own work provides a framework for how these concepts can be incorporated into medical education.

Continue reading in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine

Featured Annotation: Sawbones Memorial by Sinclair Ross

In this annotation, Jaclyn Duffin writes, "“For readers of this database, [the book] contains a succinct but vivid portrayal of the life and work of a country doctor in the early twentieth century—through war, influenza, the Dust Bowl depression, and small-town nastiness…”

Continue reading

Gold Humanism Summit Art Gallery

The Gold Humanism Summit Art Gallery, a feature of the 2024 Gold Humanism Summit: The Person in Front of You, showcases artwork that reflects experiences, creativity, and insights from clinicians, trainees, patients, caregivers, and members of the healthcare community.

Explore the art gallery

(shown above: "I Can Hear It" by Arinze Ochuba, Medical Student, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine)

Quick Links:

• The Changing Role of the Apothecary
• Enough of What Is and Isn’t So: Dying in Philip Roth
• “The Saddest Waste” — Disability, Heredity, and the Artist’s Eye
• Health Communication and the Arts in the United States: A Scoping Review
• What’s art got to do with it?—Transfer of learning in museum-based health professions education

More opportunities:

• Everything that Makes Us Human: The Potentials of the Medical Humanities (International Interdisciplinary Online Symposium), abstract deadline 3/1/24
• Health Humanities: Dismantling Structural Injustice in Healthcare (faculty development - virtual longitudinal institute), application deadline 3/5/24
• Dr. Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest, deadline 3/13/24
• Journal of Medical Humanities: call for poems on the theme of coming apart and/or becoming whole, deadline 3/15/24
• Gold Student Summer Fellowships, application deadline 3/18/24
• "Uncertainty in Medicine": call for stories for new podcast series from The Nocturnists in collaboration with Arts Practica, deadline 3/24/24
• Journal of Loss and Trauma: call for manuscripts for a Special Issue on "Mindfulness for mitigating loss and trauma," deadline 3/31/24
• AMA Journal of Ethics: call for artwork - "Embodiment in Art Practice," deadline 7/30/24

Feb. 19

The Metagnosis Project Workshop (free narrative medicine writing workshop, online)

Feb. 26

Journeys End, Journeys Begin: Clinicians & Families Grieving Together (hybrid)

Feb. 27

15th Annual History Of Medicine Night (online)

Feb. 29 - Mar. 2

2024 Gold Humanism Summit: The Person in Front of You (Atlanta, GA)

Mar. 6

Narrative Medicine Rounds: "How resilient is the self? A hermeneutic look at an unresolved question," with Jens Brockmeier (online)

Mar. 7

Creative and Reflective Writing Workshop for Health Practitioners (online, four sessions beginning March 7)

Mar. 20

From Medical Memoir to CPR : A Conversation with Physician-Writer Dr. Sunita Puri (hybrid)

Apr. 10-13

Social, Emotional, and Community Health: Humanities Interventions (Phoeniz, AZ)

Apr. 26-28

Narrative Intersections: Communicating Across Differences (New York, NY)

Jul. 20-24

10th International Medical Improv Train-the-Trainer Workshop (Chicago, IL)

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