This Basic Workshop provides an intensive introductory experience to the methods and skills of Narrative Medicine, with a special focus on the ways narrative medicine techniques can approach the issues of burnout and moral injury in healthcare, and in the workplace in general. These practices are then applicable to unlimited clinical and non-clinical settings. From Friday at 2 pm to Sunday at 2:30 pm, participants gather for plenary presentations by the founders of the Division of Narrative Medicine alternating with small-group seminars and a guest lecture by Kelley Skeff. Participants will form small groups of eight that stay together throughout the weekend, while small group facilitators rotate through the groups.
Plenary presentations by faculty open up themes of how stories work, exploring concepts such as creativity, ethics, bearing witness, and empathy, while the small groups practice rigorous skills in close reading, creative writing, and responding to the writings of others. Close reading is an integral part of the workshop as is short prompted writing and discussion. Participants will gain access to our online resource page prior to the start of the workshop where all information necessary to prepare for the weekend is provided, including literary texts, film, visual art and seminar articles in the field of narrative medicine by leading educators.
Workshop Description & Objectives
These intensive workshops will offer rigorous skill-building in narrative competence. Participants will learn effective techniques for attentive listening, adopting others’ perspectives, accurate representation, and reflective reasoning. Plenary sessions will focus on reconceptualizing empathy, narrative ethics, bearing witness, and illness narratives.
Small group seminars will offer firsthand experience in close reading, reflective writing, and autobiographical exercises. The target audience is physicians, other health care professionals and scholars interested in Narrative Medicine.
Audience
We invite nurses, physicians, dentists, chaplains, social workers, therapists, public health professionals and other clinicians, as well as writers, academics, scholars and all those interested in the intersection of narrative and medicine to join us. By combining these groups of participants, we can all learn how to unify what are sometimes divided efforts in patient care, integrating the ethical awareness and sensibility with the clinical recognition that can ensue.
The Workshop will be held on Friday from 2p-8p, Saturday from 8:30a-5p and Sunday from 8:30a-2:30p. For additional information, email Joseph Eveld at
jhe2109@cumc.columbia.edu or call the Division of Narrative Medicine at 212-305-1952.
Follow links for detailed schedule information.
Come work and study with us for a weekend. Gather with colleagues from the world over to learn the narrative skills of close reading, attentive listening, and creative writing. Find out how your own imagination can reveal things you know unawares. Experience the deep bonds that can form among clinicians and those who care about health care in short periods of small group intensive narrative work. Recognize and be recognized as ones who have care within them.