 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Literature & Medicine: National Connections
[Connecticut ::: Illinois ::: Maine ::: Massachusetts
::: New Hampshire ::: North Carolina ::: Rhode Island ::: Utah ::: Vermont]
CONNECTICUT
The Connecticut Humanities Council
is pleased to announce that its first Literature & Medicine: Humanities
at the Heart of Health Care® seminar will be held in Bridgeport
Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 2005.
ILLINOIS
The Illinois Humanities Council’s
Literature & Medicine program has been running at Central
DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Illinois since February 2003. Amy
Levin, Northern Illinois University English professor and Head of
Women’s Studies, former member of our Speakers Bureau and good friend
to the IHC, is our facilitator. Texts have included Geraldine Brooks’
Year of Wonders, Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illych
and Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.
During the December session the group discussed a collection of poetry
by nurses called Intensive Care. Meetings run from 7-8:30pm once
a month and include a light snack, provided by the hospital. Our hospital
liaisons are a doctor and the hospital’s head librarian. We have
also talked to the new CEO of Kishwaukee Hospital in DeKalb, Illinois
about initiating a Literature & Medicine program there.
MAINE
In 2003, Maine Humanities
Council worked with 16 hospitals, all of whom were hosting Literature
& Medicine seminars for their third year or more; we are working
with 17 sites in 2004. In October 2003, we hosted a public conference,
Imagine What It's Like: Literature as a Bridge Between Cultures.
The focus of the conference reflected the desire of many Literature
& Medicine participants to better understand the effects of cultural
issues in their work. Arthur Kleinman, a medical anthropologist
and leader in cross-cultural psychiatry, was the keynote speaker. He was
joined by Rafael Campo,
a physician and award-winning poet, and Veneta Masson, a poet and
registered nurse who helped to found a small, inner-city clinic in Washington,
D.C. Ms. Masson read poems from her book, Rehab
at the Florida Avenue Grill.
The word is getting out! The Maine Hospital Association has cited Literature & Medicine as a patient-quality initiative. There was an article about the program, “Expanding Our Concept of the Medical Literature: The Value of the Humanities in Medicine,” by Maine seminar participant Noel Genova, PA in the March, 2003 issue of JAPPA, the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. More recently, Victoria Bonebakker, Project Director, authored an article about Literature & Medicine published in the October 2003 issue of the journal, Academic Medicine. Victoria and former Literature & Medicine liaison (and now MHC Board member) Charles Alexander of Maine Coast Hospital presented the program at the national meeting of The Society for the Arts in Health Care in Washington, D.C. this April. Dina McKelvy, a liaison at Southern Maine Medical Center, will have an article about the program in an upcoming issue of The Journal of Hospital Librarianship. An article by Jolynn Tumolo featuring the program will also appear in the July issue of Advance for Nurse Practitioners.
Maine is also delighted to have received funding from the Society
for the Arts in Health Care/Johnson & Johnson Grant Program
to support our second Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the
Heart of Health Care® Summer Institute this June. The
Institute is for facilitators, state councils, and hospital liaisons who
will be initiating Literature & Medicine seminars in their
states. Five new state partners — Connecticut, Maryland, Montana,
Nebraska, and New Jersey — will send teams of people for training.
In addition, several existing state partners will send facilitators and
hospital liaisons from new sites.
MASSACHUSETTS
Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities
offered Literature & Medicine this spring at five hospitals:
four of the initial five from 2003 (Children’s and Faulkner Hospital
in Boston, UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, and Berkshire
Medical Center in Pittsfield), plus Lahey Clinic in Burlington.
Newton-Wellesley Hospital elected to take a break for a year while it
undergoes reorganization. Some hospitals are continuing the program despite
budget shortfalls that make it difficult to fund even the modest cost
of a light meal for members of the discussion group. Their commitment
is a powerful testimony to the value of the program. One hospital administrator
wrote of last spring’s seminars:
These seminars provided the opportunity to meet, listen to, and have my thinking questioned and influenced by men and women who are deeply committed to patients and who have rich experiences to share... We had a cross section of participants — medical and basic science and nursing students, physicians and nurses working in tertiary hospitals as well as in the community, administrators, counselors, young and old — all [of whom] thought deeply and cared deeply about the issues suggested in the literature.... Each person’s participation was welcomed. This program should continue and be expanded.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
The New Hampshire Humanities Council
recently held a public conference with Perri Klass, M.D., Todd Hochberg,
and Michael Rowe, Ph.D. as guest keynote speakers on November 1,
2003. Health Care and the Examined Life took place in Concord
and was a day of presentations and workshops focused on the power of human
knowledge and ethical reflection in health care. In 2004, the Council
is continuing its Literature & Medicine series, which has been
known in New Hampshire as “Communities of Care,” at locations
statewide, in both new and veteran program sites.
NORTH CAROLINA
North Carolina Humanities Council
offered its first Literature & Medicine seminars at Wesley
Long Community Hospital, Greensboro, North Carolina in 2004.
RHODE ISLAND
In 2003, the Rhode Island Council
for the Humanities (RICH) held Literature & Medicine
seminars at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Providence; Kent
County Hospital, Warwick; Neighborhood Community Health Plan of
Rhode Island (statewide); South County Hospital, Wakefield;
and Child & Family Services, Newport. RICH has continued to
organize seminars in 2004.
UTAH
Utah Humanities
Council offered a six-part Literature & Medicine seminar
at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City in 2003. Rachel Borup,
Professor of English at the University of Utah, was the facilitator for
the seminar. LDS Hospital will host another series in 2004, and
we are working with the Utah Medical Association to identify another group
for 2005.
VERMONT
After a successful first year running Literature & Medicine
in five hospitals in 2003, the Vermont
Humanities Council (VHC) added another five in January 2004. “Literature
& Medicine is an idea whose time has come — or is even overdue,”
says program director Larissa Picard. “It sells itself. Three
of the five new hospitals contacted me to get on board.” Given that
Vermont only has 14 hospitals, VHC hopes to be at 100 percent participation
by 2005. The press has also taken notice — Vermont Public Radio
plans to run a feature story on the program. Facilitator Elayne Clift’s
essay about her experience facilitating at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital
was published in the online magazine, Dermanities
in December, 2003.
|
|
|
|
Literature & Medicine has received major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.