A Medical Humanist's Notes

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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