Literature & Medicine: National Connections
[Arizona ::: Connecticut ::: Delaware ::: Florida ::: Hawaii ::: Illinois ::: Maine ::: Maryland ::: Massachusetts ::: Missouri ::: Montana ::: Nebraska ::: New Hampshire ::: New Jersey ::: North Carolina ::: Rhode Island ::: South Carolina ::: Utah ::: Vermont ::: Virginia ::: click to specific state or scroll to read all]

The Arizona Humanities Council’s first year offering Literature & Medicine was a big success. Our first program began in September 2006 at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. They were so enthusiastic about the opportunity to participate that they decided to meet for eight months rather than six. They will continue with Lit & Med and are in the process of developing an ancillary “short-form” program specifically for nurses who are on 12-hour shifts and unable to attend the traditional program.

In addition to St. Joe’s, the University of Arizona Medical Center ran a Lit & Med program for their Family and Community Medicine department from January through June 2007. They are also planning on continuing this year. Through the auspices of one of our Board members, we began a program at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa in July, and they are starting their second program this spring. North Country Community Health Center in Flagstaff will also host a program this spring. They have partnered with the Flagstaff Book Festival to co-sponsor the presentation of one or two of the authors featured in their program syllabus.

The benefits of these programs have been widespread, affecting not only the direct participants, but also their colleagues and the broader healthcare community. At St. Joe’s for instance, every meeting in every department begins with a “reflection.” Since the advent of the Lit & Med program, several of the participants have been using passages from poems and stories they’ve read and discussed for these reflections. The result has been to raise awareness of the program with the broader St. Joe’s community, and to give everyone a small, thought-provoking taste of the remarkable body of literature that speaks to medical issues.

Word has spread throughout St. Joe’s about the Lit & Med program and the Director of Education has begun creating special Literature & Medicine-inspired events for a larger audience. Their first hospital-wide event was hosting a local community theater production of the play W;t; the attendance at that performance was just over 200!

Some quotes from Lit & Med program participants in Arizona will give you a sense of the powerful impact of this program:

“The conversations we had with colleagues were absolutely wonderful. I so appreciated hearing what the doctors were thinking and worrying about. The cultural issues really opened up for me and I gained more respect for diverse cultures and the way things are seen in relationship to medicine.”

“The discussion on cultural issues really took hold of me. I’m oftentimes involved in discussions about patients who can’t afford to pay for care and how decisions are made when you have to make choices. Our reading and discussion has made the issue more complicated for me, and that is a good thing. I now appreciate more how culture and religious diversity does affect hospitalization and recovery.”

“The exposure to this literature has been a wonderful experience for me and I very much hope that we can continue.... I gain so much insight and ‘Ah Ha’s’ from listening to others’ thoughts/perceptions that truly enhances this experience for me—Maybe it is the same for others.”

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The Connecticut Humanities Council reports that Danbury Hospital and the University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington are hosting a program in 2008. ::: back to top

The Delaware Humanities Forum reports that they are working with two sites in 2008: Wilmington Hospital and Christiana Hospital, Newark. ::: back to top

The Florida Humanities Council is currently funding four Lit & Med programs. Following Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s very successful initial program, invited Lois Nixon, Professor of Ethics and Humanities at the College of Medicine and the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida, to return for another six sessions this year. Liaison Patti Reynolds and Lois were very helpful in introducing three new sites in Broward County to the Lit & Med program during a training workshop for all interested parties organized by Susan Lockwood of FHC and led by Lizz Sinclair of Maine Humanities Council.

Memorial Regional Hospital liaison Sally Haff is collaborating with facilitator Dr. Donna Weir-Soley, Assistant Professor of English at Florida International University. At the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, liaison Jessica Adelman and facilitator Dr. Robin Fiore, Professor of Ethics at Florida Atlantic University are working together. Liaison Regina Mathison at Memorial Hospital West and Dr. Ed Stieve, Associate Professor of Humanities at Nova Southeastern University are leading the series. Each group has recruited a full complement of participants, chosen its syllabi, and are enjoying rich and rewarding discussions. ::: back to top

Hawai’i Council for the Humanities is in its second year of hosting a Literature & Medicine program. Craig Howes, University of Hawaii Professor and Director of the Center for Biographical Research, is facilitating for the group at Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women & Children in 2008. Their readings will include Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories, Juliet Kono's Tsunami Years, The Age of Grief: A Novella and Stories by Jane Smiley and Jerome Groopman’s book, How Doctors Think. Shannon Brigman is serving as the hospital's liaison.

The University of Hawaii Press will publish the long awaited Literature & Medicine anthology, Imagine What It’s Like, in June 2008. Thank you to Craig Howe and the Hawaii Humanities Council for helping make this happen!

[Aloha to Hawaii's new Lit & Med Program officer, Kim Schauman!]

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The Illinois Humanities Council is in our fifth year of Literature & Medicine seminars at Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Illinois and in our fourth year at both Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb and the Midwest Palliative Care Center in suburban Glenview. The program has been very well received at these collaborating hospitals, and all involved are enthusiastic about the continuation of the seminar. In the words of one participant, Literature & Medicine is a “wonderful learning opportunity to explore and understand our unity as healthcare professionals as well as our diversity.” Another participant, a physician, wrote a special note to me describing Literature & Medicine as “a wonderful gift the Illinois Humanities Council has given to the ailing healthcare force.” She went on to explain that it is the national scope of this program that inspires her: “It is wonderful to be participating in these groups around the country.”

Participant surveys tell us that the vast majority of participants feel that the seminar increases their ability to recognize and deal with the different values and perspectives that patients and their families may bring to a situation, even if they differ from their own. As one nurse participant put it, “Although I previously felt I was a very compassionate nurse/manager who was able to see the ‘people’ issues and concerns, some of these readings really opened my eyes to how I can be even more open to all the human variables in healthcare.”

Based on the success of the program at these three sites, we recently received a grant to expand Literature & Medicine to three hospitals serving at risk populations in Chicago. The grant funded an initial conference and training session in July of last year for Chicago area facilitators and hospital liaisons, and other healthcare professionals with an interest in medicine and the humanities. We were very fortunate to have Victoria Bonebakker come from Maine to join us at this meeting. The new Chicago seminars have been running since fall 2007 at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, Mt. Sinai Hospital, and Rush University Medical Center. We believe our experience working with these hospitals all of which serve low income, underserved, and physically disabled patients has prepared us to reach out to VA hospitals and approach them about the value of the program in these settings.

We are very excited that Chicago has been chosen as the site for the Literature & Medicine Training Institute, and we look forward to welcoming the MHC and institute participants in June.

Illinois Humanities Council staff person Phoebe Stein Davis in a workshop at Caring for the Caregiver: Perspectives in Literature and Medicine, Literature & Medicine’s first national conference, held in Manchester, New Hampshire in November 2007

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The Maine Humanities Council is pleased to announce that Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care® just completed its 11th year!

In 2008, 14 hospitals will host a Lit & Med program in Maine. 13 sites are returning: Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and Mayo Regional Medical Center in Dover-Foxcroft (the sites for the first Lit & Med programs in 1997 and 1998, respectively); Maine Coast Hospital, Ellsworth; Maine Medical Center, Portland; Mercy Hospital, Portland; Mid Coast Hospital, Brunswick; Mt. Desert Island Hospital, Bar Harbor; Pen Bay Medical Center, Rockport; Sebasticook Valley Hospital, Pittsfield; Stephens Memorial Hospital, Norway; Togus Veterans’ Hospital, Augusta; and York Hospital. Welcome to our newest partner, Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston and to Maureen Fournier and Larissa Vigue Picard, CMMC’s dedicated liaison and facilitator. Welcome to our new liaisons at Mercy Hospital, James Corbett and Melissa Skahan. Many thanks to each of the liaisons and facilitators whose dedication, creativity and thoughtfulness makes this program so successful.

Victoria Bonebakker and Lizz Sinclair have spent the past year working on grant proposals, organizing the Caring for the Caregiver Conference, working with the program’s evaluator, giving trainings and presentations, and planning for our upcoming Literature & Medicine Training Institute in June 2008. We are delighted to welcome Annie Medeiros as Lit & Med’s new program assistant, and thank Carolyn Sloan for all of her help in the past.

MDI facilitator Candice Stover and liaison Melanie Modern at Literature & Medicine’s first national conference, Caring for the Caregiver: Perspectives in Literature and Medicine in November 2007

Betsy Hart, Marjorie Boyd, Ann Lemire and Bruce Clary were among the Mainers involved in Lit & Med who presented at the Caring for the Caregiver Conference in the fall. You can read more about the conference in our lead article.

Last but not least, once again the group at Maine Coast Hospital in Ellsworth presented their facilitator Marli Weiner with a creative interpretation of the books they read each year. This year’s syllabus included The Illiad, hence the horse piñata filled with items representing the other readings from 2007!

The Maine Coast Horse!                   Maine Coast Hospital’s Lit & Med Group, 2007

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The Maryland Humanities Council is delighted to sponsor Literature & Medicine in three Maryland hospitals. The program returns for its fourth year at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. Before retiring from Mercy, Sister Jeremy Daigler, Lit & Med liaison, passed the reigns on to Carole Rybicki and Ann Fisher, who prepared for their new role as hospital liaisons by attending the Fall 2007 conference Caring for the Caregiver: Perspectives on Literature and Medicine. Karen Arnold will facilitate conversation on themes such as the relationship between hospital design and healing, and practicing medicine in high-risk environments.

Facilitator Fred Guy, Director of the University of Baltimore’s Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics, and hospital liaison Anne Hoffman, Clinical Social Worker at Kennedy Krieger Institute, work closely together to select readings for the staff at this world re-known children’s hospital in Baltimore. Now in their second year, participants have read works ranging from The Little Prince, to Billy Budd, to Gimp: When Life Deals You a Crappy Hand You Can Fold or You Can Play by Frank Zupan.

The enthusiasm for the start of Literature & Medicine at Union Hospital in Elkton is awesome. This new site will begin in May 2008 with Holly Emmons serving as hospital liaison. Ray Peters from the University of Delaware will be the facilitator. ::: back to top

Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities is pleased to be partnering with three health care facilities in 2008: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, our newest partner in the program; UMass Memorial Medical Center and UMass Medical School, Worchester; and The Lahey Clinic in Burlington. Martin Newhouse, the facilitator for the group at Lahey, has shared what the group has taught him in this issue of Synapse.

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Missouri Humanities Council has given a grant to Saint Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City to offer the Literature & Medicine program in 2008. This is the first program in Missouri! Marie Thompson, Saint Luke’s medical librarian, is the person who got the program going and serves as their liaison.::: back to top

Montana Committee for the Humanities hopes to hold Literature & Medicine programs in the fall of 2008. Contact Kim Anderson at the MCH for more information. ::: back to top

The Nebraska Humanities Council is once again sponsoring a program at the Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha.

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The New Hampshire Humanities Council is working with eight hospitals this year: Concord Hospital, Concord; Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Hanover; St. Joseph Hospital, Nashua; Littleton Regional Hospital, Littleton; Southern NH Medical Center, Nashua; Parkland Medical Center, Derry; NH State Hospital, Concord and Lakes Region General Hospital, Laconia.

“The program is contagious,” says Program Director Kathy Smith. “It is spilling over from hospitals into community health centers and long-term patient care facilities. Just this morning I got a call from the director of behavioral medicine at Concord Hospital who wants to start a group for residents and faculty.”

We are confident that the program will expand appreciably as a result of a new Arts & Humanities Health Network launched by the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire. The goals of the program include increasing the role arts and humanities play in regional health care and developing a three-year strategic plan that will include pilot projects and funding and sustainability strategies.

The NH Humanities Council also plans to launch a pilot program in narrative medicine, which will focus on writing and healthcare, sometime in 2008.

Finally, we are working with many new facilitators eager to be a part of the Literature & Medicine movement. They differ from traditional humanists in their background and training. Some are professionals in the clinical health field, some in theology and pastoral counseling, and some in psychotherapy and group dynamics. This is a departure for us, as we have depended almost exclusively on teachers of English and liberal arts in the past.

[Thank you to the New Hampshire Humanities Council for their help with the Caring for the Caregiver conference! Special thanks also go to Betsy Burtis, liaison at Southern New Hampshire Health System in Nashua, for managing the CEUs and CMEs for the Caring for the Caregiver conference—no small feat! The workshop that she led on facilitation was so successful that she will be leading another at the 2008 Literature & Medicine Institute in Chicago.] ::: back to top

2007 marked the successful completion of the third year of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Literature & Medicine program! Five hospitals returned from 2006: The Cancer Institute of New Jersey (New Brunswick); Mountainside Hospital (Montclair); Overlook Hospital (Summit); AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center (Pomona); and Cooper University Hospital (Camden). And one new hospital joined the program: The Healthcare Foundation Center for Humanism and Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey - New Jersey Medical School (Newark).

At all six sites, participants engaged in thoughtful and lively discussions connecting literature, poetry, and film with their work as health care providers. The program brought together physicians, nurses, social workers, and administrative staff to reflect on their roles and responsibilities as care givers. Participants gained greater self-awareness. One hospital administrator remarked: “We learned about ourselves by reading, discussing, and empathizing with characters in the stories and literature we examined.”

On June 12 at the Rutgers Club in New Brunswick, New Jersey liaisons and scholar/facilitators met to discuss their experiences in the 2007 Literature & Medicine program and to look ahead to 2008.

In November, six representatives from New Jersey attended a two-day national Literature & Medicine conference in Manchester, NH. The conference brought together health care professionals to learn about a range of innovative programs, best practices, new research and evaluation methods. During the conference, NJCH Program Officer Elizabeth Motts was a co-presenter at a nuts-and-bolts session about how to begin a Literature & Medicine program at a hospital or health care facility.

There are 5 sites hosting the program 2008: The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, New Brunswick; Cooper University Hospital, Camden; Mountainside Hospital, Montclair; Overlook Hospital, Summit; and The Healthcare Foundation Center for Humanism and Medicine at UMDNJ-NJMS, Newark

Scholar/facilitator Jeanne Kerwin with Dr. Rita Charon at the first national Lit & Med conference, Caring for the Caregiver: Perspectives in Literature and Medicine, in November.

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The Literature & Medicine program is not being offered by the North Carolina Humanities Council at this time. If you are interested in starting a program at your health care facility, please contact Lizz Sinclair. ::: back to top

The Literature & Medicine program is not being offered by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities at this time. If you are interested in starting a program at your health care facility, please contact Lizz Sinclair. ::: back to top

The Humanities Council South Carolina is offering the Literature & Medicine program at Columbia Area Mental Health Center and Sisters of Charity Providence Hospitals, both in Columbia.

We have enjoyed seeing the positive effects of being a part of this program for several years. In this state the nursing profession endures a weighty workload, with heavy responsibilities and long hours due to a shortage of nurses. The feedback from the Literature & Medicine programs conducted in South Carolina affirms what we know already in the humanities field: by learning to listen to others, engagement in literature discussions and readings, gaining respect for diverse opinions, and understanding the larger context of issues help people communicate and creates a stronger community. The hospitals and staff during the program begin to create new, positive ways in which they relate to each other, increase their job satisfaction, and help all the participants resolve their personal and professional issues.

The Literature & Medicine program allows concrete and abstract worlds to mingle together to create change in society that is longstanding. In our state's largest and most prominent research, teaching, and specialized care hospital, the Medical University of SC, Charleston, one of the teaching physicians stated during a Literature & Medicine discussion:

“...entering medical school and my internship left me with such a sense of disillusionment as to why I entered into the medical profession of all. I entered really trying to help people have better lives. The harshness and competition of the school and job stopped me from focusing on my first reasons to be a physician. This program has helped me remember why and I will definitely be able to help my students when they enter their internships.”

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The Utah Humanities Council is once again partnering with LDS Hospital, Salt Lake City to host a program. ::: back to top

Most Vermont Humanities Council Literature & Medicine sites have now switched to a fall-winter schedule over the traditional January-June timeline. Last year, the VA Medical and Regional Office Center in White River Junction was the first to try the revised schedule and found it fit better with the routine of the staff. In the northeast, once the weather turns nice in May and June (if not April!) outdoor activities ramp up whereas an after-hours monthly book discussion group is ideal to perk up the cold and dark months. Some sites run the program September - March, skipping December altogether due to the holidays; others run it October - March and hold the discussions early enough in the month to avoid the holiday crunch.

Speaking of the Vermont VA site, Literature & Medicine has been especially successful there for another reason. As more and more attention focuses on the needs of veterans returning from Iraq, and the care that veterans of all wars deserve, the program provides an ideal platform for VA staff to discuss their unique role. Bobbie Surott Kimberly, a Primary Care Social Worker at the Vermont VA who works specifically with female and geriatric veterans, had this to say about the program:

“I have been involved with Literature & Medicine for several years and am continually amazed at the depth of discussion in which our multidisciplinary group engages. I worked for many years in the public/private sector before coming to the VA and though I have no doubt the program is powerful in those settings, the ability to choose topics and readings which deal with the specific issues our veterans confront is clearly advantageous. I appreciate that we cover the unique experiences [of] veterans that at times complicate their care and their provider’s ability to care for them.”

The sites hosting a Lit & Med program in 2008, along with the number years they have participated are: Brattleboro Memorial Hospital (5); Central Vermont Medical Center, Berlin (4), Gifford Medical Center, Randolph (5); Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital, St. Johnsbury (5); Northwestern Medical Center, St. Albans (6); Porter Medical Center, Middlebury (5); Rutland Regional Medical Center (6); Vermont State Hospital, Waterbury (2); Veterans’ Administration Medical and Regional Office Center, White River Junction (4) and Fletcher Allen Health Care, Burlington (6). ::: back to top

Katie Strotman of the Fairfax County Library attended our very first Literature & Medicine Summer Institute, and since that time has organized a Literature & Medicine program for local health care professionals through the library. In 2008 they will sponsor a program for Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church. The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities is supporting this effort. ::: back to top

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