On Physicians and Writing

Do you know any doctors who are also writers? At the Examined Life Conference, April 9-12, 2014, sponsored by The University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, I joined over two hundred health care professionals interested in the link between the science of medicine and the art of writing. My presentation on physicians seeking an MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) wasn’t scheduled until Saturday afternoon, so I had time to attend the various sessions. The difficult part was choosing among so many excellent break-out lectures, discussions and mini-workshops! The conference was evenly divided between medical humanities education and tips for authors. Among the questions addressed:

Do the humanities have a necessary role in medical education?

The answer was a resounding yes! Formal humanities education, examined in several studies, reduced the incidence of compassion fatigue, depression and burn-out in medical students, residents, and faculty. Learning effective communication strategies from poetry and prose prove invaluable when addressing health-care policy, social injustice, and third-world experiences. The hard data presented reinforced my belief that structured humanities opportunities provide important tools for HCP’s of the future.

How do we effectively teach reflective writing?
Medical students and residents already feel overwhelmed. It takes a full commitment from faculty and a mandatory program to overcome their resistance. Humanities directors must impress upon deans and residency directors that reflective writing is not therapy or a creative writing class. Rather, it is training in communication with self, community, and patients through prose, poetry, art and music, The program must be low-key, and provide positive results early.

How do I write for a non-medical audience?
NYT writer Louise Aronson,MD, MFA, provided tips and tricks for writing Op-Ed and advocacy pieces. She emphasized using anecdotes or vignettes to make the audience care about the topic, including no more than 3 pieces of hard data, and having a clear goal of a specific action in mind.

Editors from several literary magazines discussed what types of ideas and writing grab their interest. Besides excellent writing, grammar, and punctuation, they look for visceral images and an emotional punch without sentimentality. Although all admitted that the chance of getting published was small, they enthusiastically told the crowd to keep submitting. Fiction authors gave advice on creating sympathetic and well-rounded “characters” in non-fiction, and poets helped us to identify the images in our work.

The conference included pre and intra-meeting workshops in prose and poetry and three plenary sessions, including author, lecturer, and LGBTQ advocate Andrew Solomon who gave a heartbreakingly beautiful talk about his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning book Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.

Ample time was available to socialize with friends new and old. For me, the highlight of the conference was an opportunity to see, and more importantly, to touch the rare books held in the medical library, including Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica from 1543.

I always leave this conference with a notebook full of notes, ideas and advice for my own writing, and with refreshed belief in the essential role for the humanities in medical education. I can approach the final year of my MFA in Creative Nonfiction with renewed enthusiasm and continue to pursue my goal of teaching reflective writing as a part of a medical school faculty. The Examined Life Conference deserves its reputation as the premier international conference in Medical Humanities. See you there next year!

Bio:  Maureen Hirthler,MD, has worked in Emergency Medicine for over twenty years, and is currently a full-time MFA student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She can be reached at mhirthler@gmail.com.