Hi everyone!
Hopefully, all of you had a wonderful week. As for me, I finally got to set foot on the University of Arizona College of Medicine campus and familiarize myself with the involvement of the Narrative Medicine department!
On Wednesday morning, I had the opportunity to shadow Dr. Hartmark-Hill in her "Visiting Professorship" meaning with Dr. Beyda, the head of UofA's Bioethics and Medical Humanism department. The meeting started off with scheduling of various narrative medicine events as a way to continue promoting patient stories in the local medical community, and this segwayed into discussion of narrative medicine at an international level. It was pretty cool to see that a physician all the way in Venezuela chose University of Arizona to get professional medical training because of its focus of humanities in medicine and value of patient stories.
After the meeting, Dr. Hartmark-Hill gave me a tour of the campus, and I was truly mesmerized by the medicinal and anatomical canvas paintings hung up on the walls. Although the campus isn't dedicated to narrative medicine, there is definitely a strong influence of the simplae presence of medical humanities and narrative medicine programs in the building.
We later attended a medical humanities writer's group, which was hosted by two authors who used creative writing as an emotional outlet for their experiences in the medical world. The collaboration was called "True Stories: Exercises to Pull Meaning from Memories, Part I", and the authors Amy Silverman and Paul Rubin set up a workshop followed by a telling of their own story. Listening to their development as writers through the power of medicine was really inspiring; Ms. Silverman wrote on the story of science and love in coping with her daughter's down syndrome and Mr. Rubin writes through the interaction and bonds formed when a diversity of people share an equally diverse set of stories.
The following day, I was able to sit in on my first medical student lecture! I actually wasn't aware this was a big deal, but I was told that first graduate-level lectures are a milestone, so there's that. My first lecture was on cardiomyopathy, and this covered the different forms of cardiac diseases and their corresponding treatments and prognoses. One thing that stood out to me was that each disease and patient was treated as almost a two-dimensional object, and the options for treatment were simply categorized in "drugs", "devices", or "cardiac transplant". Although the medical student curriculum was offering professional education on the heart, I felt that there was a lack of depth and realization that each patient has differing symptoms based on their story as a person. However, the second lecture was called "Heart Sounds with Harvey", and right from the title I could guess that this would be interactive and offer characterization to each patient. This lecture was a case-study, so each patient was treated as a unique case, and each heart rhythm was associated with a patient story regarding their racial background or age. Here, the medical student education was certainly integrating the humanistic approach to medicine, and I noticed that the students were a lot more interested and were able to better apply their knowledge towards becoming a physician.
On Wednesday morning, I had the opportunity to shadow Dr. Hartmark-Hill in her "Visiting Professorship" meaning with Dr. Beyda, the head of UofA's Bioethics and Medical Humanism department. The meeting started off with scheduling of various narrative medicine events as a way to continue promoting patient stories in the local medical community, and this segwayed into discussion of narrative medicine at an international level. It was pretty cool to see that a physician all the way in Venezuela chose University of Arizona to get professional medical training because of its focus of humanities in medicine and value of patient stories.
After the meeting, Dr. Hartmark-Hill gave me a tour of the campus, and I was truly mesmerized by the medicinal and anatomical canvas paintings hung up on the walls. Although the campus isn't dedicated to narrative medicine, there is definitely a strong influence of the simplae presence of medical humanities and narrative medicine programs in the building.
We later attended a medical humanities writer's group, which was hosted by two authors who used creative writing as an emotional outlet for their experiences in the medical world. The collaboration was called "True Stories: Exercises to Pull Meaning from Memories, Part I", and the authors Amy Silverman and Paul Rubin set up a workshop followed by a telling of their own story. Listening to their development as writers through the power of medicine was really inspiring; Ms. Silverman wrote on the story of science and love in coping with her daughter's down syndrome and Mr. Rubin writes through the interaction and bonds formed when a diversity of people share an equally diverse set of stories.
The following day, I was able to sit in on my first medical student lecture! I actually wasn't aware this was a big deal, but I was told that first graduate-level lectures are a milestone, so there's that. My first lecture was on cardiomyopathy, and this covered the different forms of cardiac diseases and their corresponding treatments and prognoses. One thing that stood out to me was that each disease and patient was treated as almost a two-dimensional object, and the options for treatment were simply categorized in "drugs", "devices", or "cardiac transplant". Although the medical student curriculum was offering professional education on the heart, I felt that there was a lack of depth and realization that each patient has differing symptoms based on their story as a person. However, the second lecture was called "Heart Sounds with Harvey", and right from the title I could guess that this would be interactive and offer characterization to each patient. This lecture was a case-study, so each patient was treated as a unique case, and each heart rhythm was associated with a patient story regarding their racial background or age. Here, the medical student education was certainly integrating the humanistic approach to medicine, and I noticed that the students were a lot more interested and were able to better apply their knowledge towards becoming a physician.
I'm really glad that I was able to be a part of a medical
community that views medicine in social and emotional context because, it's
hard to describe objectively, but there really is a difference in their
attitudes towards clinical practices and the overlap between professionalism
and humanism. Thank you for reading such a long post!
Anivarya
