Conferences and Training
The Maine Humanities Council organizes national Literature & Medicine Training Institutes to provide hospital staff, scholars and humanities council staff with the information they need to organize a Literature & Medicine program. These Institutes are required for anyone involved in organizing a L&M program; they are offered every other year, dependent on funding.
MHC also organizes conferences to bring the larger literature and medicine community together.
Upcoming
Training Institutes
There will be a special training on November 11 & 12, 2010 in Washington, D.C. in conjunction with the next Literature & Medicine conference, After Shock: Human Perspectives on Trauma. Please contact us for more information.
Conferences
This conference will help health care professionals who work with veterans and others who have experienced trauma. It will focus on literature’s ability to provide new insights into trauma’s effects on patients and demonstrate how it can sustain health care professionals as they care for them.
This conference will be of particular interest to Veterans Health Administration staff as well as all other health care professionals.
Who should attend this conference?
- All health care professionals (direct care providers, administrators, other staff)
- Educators (health, humanities, medical)
- Students in the health professions
- Chaplains and other religious leaders
- Others interested in the topic
Benefits of attending:
- Learn how the humanities can help support patient-centered care
- Learn strategies for self care, increasing job satisfaction
- Learn about innovative programs and approaches
- Meet leaders in the field of literature and medicine
- Network with colleagues from across the country
General Sessions include:
- Kate Braestrup, first chaplain of the Maine Warden Service and award-winning author of Here is You Need Me, about coping with loss.
- Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam War veteran and acclaimed author of The Things They Carried, about the experience of combat and its after effects.
- Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD, former VHA psychiatrist, author of Achilles in Vietnam, and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient for his innovative work with veterans.
- A performance by Theater of War, whose readings of ancient Greek plays act as a catalyst for discussions about the challenges faced by service members, veterans, their caregivers and families today.
- There will also be over 20 other smaller sessions led by leaders in the field to choose from including workshops, discussions, and informal presentations.
• All working in a health care setting, particularly health care professionals who are caring for patients who have undergone trauma, in particular combat trauma, and who may have vicariously or directly experienced trauma themselves.
• Scholars and others interested in the medical humanities.
The goal of the conference is to introduce a range of humanities programs, including Literature & Medicine, that can be used to support health care professionals who are caring for patients who have undergone trauma, in particular combat trauma, and who may have vicariously or directly experienced trauma themselves. Our keynote speaker, Jonathan Shay, M.D., [bio] former VA psychiatrist and MacArthur “Genius” Award-winning author, epitomizes this approach. Shay’s books about his work with Vietnam veterans demonstrate the continuing relevance of ancient texts to our understanding of war and its costs to our warriors. In Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, Shay weaves together contemporary experience and thousand-year-old stories to illuminate issues of trauma and recovery, anger and betrayal and the difficulties of homecoming. These books, and their sources, are used frequently in Literature & Medicine, and have been invaluable in helping health care providers better understand and treat the psychic wounds that many of their patients have suffered.
In addition to Dr. Shay’s keynote, we will have other plenary speakers and a wide variety of smaller, interactive breakout sessions TBA.
Registration
Please sign up here if you would like to be notified when the conference is open for registration and when more details have been confirmed. We expect to offer continuing education credits and certificates.
Podcasts
Hear talks and presentations by four leaders in the literature and medicine movement—Veneta Masson, Rita Charon, Judy Schaefer and Rafael Campo—given at the Literature & Medicine program’s first national conference, Caring for the Caregiver: Perspectives in Literature and Medicine, held in November 2007.
