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

Transitions & Transformations: Medical Humanities in Times of COVID-19

A special issue of Medical Humanities explores the ways in which the field of medical humanities can help guide our understanding of the transformative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The issue includes articles on how to bridge the data/narrative divide, postdigital health practices, and understanding COVID-19 narratives through public health humanities.

Continue reading in Medical Humanities

Window Treatment—Bringing Art and Joy to Hospital Rooms

"Imagine a simple intervention that could be implemented in any hospital room with a window—one that brings joy, relieves pain, and creates meaningful connections between patients and staff. And it only costs $4.99 plus tax." This article—co-authored by a patient and her clinicians: David Shih Wu, MD; Candice D. Harding; and Felicia M. Lombard, MSN, CRNP—highlights a unique way to spark creativity in hospital rooms.

Continue reading in JAMA

“An invitation to think differently”: a narrative medicine intervention using books and films to stimulate medical students’ reflection and patient-centeredness

This study describes how participating in a mandatory narrative medicine activity—including an introductory lecture, close reading and watching of a book and film, discussion group, and a short reflective writing exercise—impacted medical students' reflections about patients and the uniqueness of patient stories, as well as their own professional development.

Continue reading in BMC Medical Education

Literature inspired my medical career: Why the humanities are needed in health care

"Literature has had a large role in helping me define the kind of physician I strive to be," writes Dr. Irène Mathieu, who describes herself as being part of the "overlapping field of healing and poetic practices." Using her own background to center the piece, Dr. Mathieu highlights how the humanities can help address health inequity, be a balm for burnout, and make physicians more effective healers.

Continue reading in The Conversation

Featured Post: Interview with Jim LeBrecht, co-director of Crip Camp

Students in the Medical Humanities elective at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine had the opportunity to interview Jim LeBrecht, co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp. The film tells the story of a group of campers with disabilities who met as teenagers at a summer camp in upstate New York in the 1970s and later helped spark the disability rights movement.

Read the interview

Read the 2023 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest Winners

Each year, the Gold Foundation's Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest asks medical and nursing students to engage in a reflective writing exercise that illustrates an experience where they or a healthcare team member worked to ensure that humanism was at the core of care. The 2023 winning essays, inspired by a quote from U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, were published in Academic Medicine and Journal of Professional Nursing.

Read the 2023 winning essays

Quick Links:

• Considering the Objectivity of Medical Images
• Advancing Global Health Equity: The Role of the Liberal Arts in Health Professional Education
• How a Houston medical center is harmonizing health and performing arts
• Narrative medicine can help process experiences ‘on a very deep level’
• Art, anhedonia, and family psychodynamics in the creativity of Nathaniel Hawthorne

If you believe in the importance of compassion in healthcare, and would love to connect with others who do, too, don’t miss the 2024 Gold Humanism Summit: The Person in Front of You, taking place February 29-March 2 in Atlanta, Georgia. Featured speakers include Dr. Kimberly Manning, national voice of humanism and inspiring storyteller; Dr. Danielle Ofri, Bellevue Literary Review Editor-in-Chief and author of When We Do Harm; Dr. Wes Ely, expert on humanistic ICU care and author of Every Deep-Drawn Breath; and many more!

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More opportunities:

• Be part of a research study exploring Humanistic Practice (open to U.S.-based physicians), sign up for a focus group in Jan. or Feb.
• Creating Space 14: Re-imagining Belonging and Kindness, abstract deadline 1/31/24
• 2024 Graphic Medicine International Collective Award, deadline 2/15/24
• Health Humanities: Dismantling Structural Injustice in Healthcare (faculty development - virtual longitudinal institute), application deadline 3/5/24
• Journal of Medical Humanities: call for poems on the theme of coming apart and/or becoming whole, deadline 3/15/24
• 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

Jan. 30

Arts and Humanities for Good Public Health (online)

Feb. 7

Narrative Medicine Rounds: "My Father's Brain," a talk by Dr. Sandeep Jauhar (online)

Feb. 13

Everything Comes Alive with Cherry Pie: Stories of Life at the End of Life (first event from a new National Collaborative on Humanities & Ethics in Dentistry, online)

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. 20

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

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