Can Writing Improve Health?

In 1998, when I launched Writing Is Good Medicine® at the cancer center in Bennington, VT, it was based upon social psychologist James Pennebaker’s research on the health benefits of expressive writing. His studies found that patients with chronic conditions who wrote about their illness experiences showed improvements in depression, anxiety, fatigue and tension, which […]

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Injecting Humanism Into Medicine

I had the good fortune of working with the late Dr. James Wallace, the first oncologist in the State of Vermont, who came out of retirement to practicing part-time at the cancer center in Bennington. He would talk about the early days at the National Institute of Health (NIH) when chemotherapy was mostly experimental. In passing, he told me that a colleague at that time was Dr. Sidney Farber, the name attached to Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. While at NIH he worked with pioneers in the new field of oncology.

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What’s Unsaid

“I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript ‘Art Informs Medicine’ has been accepted for publication in the Art of Oncology section,” the editor noted. I was well aware that this meant that my work was going to appear in an issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology (April 20, 2010). I was thrilled. The essay was based upon my experience as a medical humanist at a cancer center. Although it was published 12 years ago, I am still amused by the reviewer’s comments about a submission to a professional journal from someone with no medical credentials.

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Can Telling Stories Help?

In a New Yorker article “Why Storytelling Is Part Of Being A Good Doctor” (July 25, 2022) Dr. Jerome Groopman confides, “For two decades, I had seen my patients and their loved ones face some of life’s most uncertain moments, and I now felt driven to bear witness to their stories.” He tells us how he felt inspired to write about his experiences as a doctor as had others before him.

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When Illness Changes Our Future

I recently discovered an email from Dr. Zail Berry, a physician with expertise in internal medicine, palliative care and Hospice. Several years ago, we had asked her to review SpeakSooner: A Patient’s Guide to Difficult Conversations, a tool I developed to help patients identify questions and concerns. Dr. Berry’s comments were especially important because of how often our materials and programs to improve doctor-patient communication have only been associated with cancer care, not other serious illnesses.

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Writing is Good Medicine™ continues

Over the years I’ve facilitated Writing is Good Medicine™ programs at the cancer center in Bennington, community workshops and conferences. More recently, due to safety concerns with COVID, online programs have been offered through my blog “A Medical Humanist’s Notes.” I must admit that I miss being in the room with participants but I’ve come […]

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Patients as Teachers

I’ve often been asked if our programs to improve doctor-patient communication have been incorporated into medical education. I can tell you that over the years we presented the Center for Communication in Medicine’s medical humanism work at Brown Medical School, New York University Medical School, University of Vermont College of Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Stanford Medical Center. It was certainly flattering to receive these invitations but we also learned something that helped shape our organization’s thinking in developing programs to bridge the communication divide between doctors and patients. Time and again we heard faculty and students talk about the challenges of incorporating communication skills training in curriculums that were already saturated with medical science courses and clinical training. I’d like to share some of what we learned.

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