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| Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care ® Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care ® is a national award-winning reading and discussion program for healthcare professionals that, as one participant writes, "renews the heart and soul of health care." Literature & Medicine discussions have helped health care professionals across the country improve their communication and interpersonal skills while increasing their cultural awareness, empathy for patients, and job satisfaction. Created by the Maine Humanities Council in 1997, Literature & Medicine encourages participants to connect the worlds of science and lived experience, giving them the opportunity to reflect on their professional roles and relationships through plays, short stories, poetry, fiction, and personal narratives in a setting where they can share their reflections with colleagues. It has a significant effect on the way participants understand their work and their relationships with patients and with each other. It is also an innovative and cost-effective way to improve patient care, as one hospital administrator expressed: “The reflection and conversation that takes place in the process greatly enhances the level of cooperation, collaboration, and esprit de corps within our hospital family and our community at large. The impetus in turn greatly improves the quality of care we provide to our patients and their families.” Maine's success with the program inspired the New Jersey Council for the Humanities to bring this program to New Jersey, now in its third year! The Literature & Medicine program takes place from January to June, with participants meeting once a month beginning with a brief dinner followed by lively, thoughtful discussion of the month’s material. Nurses’ poetry, patients’ narratives, doctors’ stories, well-known writers and little-known writers can all be on the syllabus. The state humanities council teams up a scholar from the area with a hospital liaison who arranges a room and refreshments. Liaisons and scholars attend a national training institute in Maine, and work closely with the state humanities council staff throughout the program. Evaluations for the seminars show uniformly positive results for all five goals of the program: increased empathy for patients, greater cultural awareness, improved interpersonal relations, better communication and more job satisfaction. One participant remarked that the program has, “…broadened my horizons to appreciate all the emotions/feelings involved in patient care and opened my eyes to other peoples’ points of view.” Six hospitals from Essex, Union, Middlesex, Camden, and Atlantic Counties will participate in 2007:
For more information on this program and how your hospital or health care organization can become a participant, please contact Elizabeth Motts, Program Officer, at 888-394-6524; emotts@njch.org |
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