Presentations

Can Poetry Make Better Doctors?
Developing a Medical Humanities & Arts
Curriculum at UCI-COM

Johanna Shapiro, Ph.D.,
Department of Family Medicine
June 18, 2002

View Slideshow

[1]

[2] What is the Program in Medical Humanities & Arts at UCI-COM?

  • This program incorporates humanities-and arts-based teaching into medical school and residency curricula:
    • Literature
    • Narrative ethics
    • Visual and performing arts
    • History of medicine
    • Philosophy of medicine

[3]Goals and Objectives

  • Understand the relevance of humanities to medical professionalism
  • Identify key components of a medical humanities curriculum
  • Be aware of medical humanities courses and course components at UCI-COM

[4] Rationale: Theory

  • Why teach medical humanities & arts?

[5] Poem - T.S. Eliot

[6] What Skills can the Humanities Help Student Physicians Develop?

  • Close attention, careful attention, active listening
  • Creative imagination and curiosity
  • Empathy for multiple perspectives
  • Emotional connectivity and engagement
  • Whole person understanding
  • Reflection on experience and its meaning

[7] [8]

[9] Old Jewish Proverb

  • Question:
    What is truer than the truth?
  • Answer:
    A good story

[10] Why Literature?

  • The craft of literature
    • Articulates insights, sentiments in ways that sometimes the rest of us cannot
    • Gives voice to what is submerged and suppressed (the questions behind the questions)
    • Defamiliarizes the familiar

[11]Why Literature?

  • The different assumptions and interests of literature
    • Goal is storytelling, not differential diagnosis
    • Emphasis is on character and relationships, not on treatment
    • Orientation is toward meaning, not problem-solving

[12]Why Literature?

  • The safety of literature
    • Literature as a transitional object
    • The playpen effect
    • Child-like wonder and openness

[13] [14] [15] [16]

[17] Overview of Medical Humanities Curriculum

  • Horizontal coherence
  • Vertical complexity
  • Graduated applications to patient care

[18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26]

[27]UCI-COM Conference on Uses of the Arts in Medical Education - Monday, March 24, 2003

  • Purpose
    • To explore the intellectual basis for inclusion of the arts in medical school curricula
  • Goals
    • Develop familiarity with theoretical rationale
    • Generate interdisciplinary dialogue
    • Identify opportunities for collaborative research
  • Presenters
    • Experts in visual arts, dance, and drama

[28]

[29] Specific Courses And Course Components

  • What Medical Humanities Look Like at UCI

[30] Patient Stories/Doctor Stories: Year I Selective Course

  • Longitudinal lunchtime curriculum: literature linked with course modules and issues:
    • interviewing patients
    • disability
    • physical exam
    • geriatric issues
    • breaking bad news
    • cancer
    • noncompliance
    • heart disease
    • substance abuse
    • alcoholism

[31] 3rd Year Medicine Clerkship: Clinical Humanities Component

  • 2 sessions per clerkship (3 hr each)
  • Patient narratives, including values history
  • Creative projects
    • Literary (poetry, short story, essay)
    • Artistic (photography, painting, drawing)
    • Performance (music, song, role-play)

[32] Family Medicine Residency Program: Humanities Component

  • Alcoholism
  • Anxiety
  • Common mental disorders
  • Coping with holidays
  • Cross-cultural
  • Death and dying
  • Delivering bad news
  • Depression
  • Difficult patients
  • Doctors as healers
  • Domestic violence
  • Eating disorders
  • Geriatrics
  • Poverty medicine
  • Sexuality
  • Stress in residency
  • Triangulation

[33] Humanities Component: PM&R

  • Spinal cord injury
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Stroke
  • Diabetes
  • Caregivers
  • Spirituality
  • Pain

[34]

[35] Start-up and Implementation

  • Administrative support
  • Faculty participation
  • Student involvement
  • Funding and legitimacy
    • Money helps
    • Respected inside and outside others

[36] Faculty Development

  • Informal - sharing enthusiasm, books, ideas
  • Reading group
  • Role-modeling - co-teaching
  • Workshops
  • All-day conference

[37] Evaluation

  • Systematic and creative
  • Quantitative
    • Well-designed trials of specific interventions
    • Identification of valid and reliable measures
    • Borrowing innovative methodologies
  • Qualitative
    • Open-ended interview
    • Focus-groups

[38] [39] [40]

[41] Questions?

 



Any Problems, Comments, Or Suggestions?
Email Dr. Johanna Shapiro (jfshapir@uci.edu)
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University Of California, Irvine