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We've long known about books' ability to comfort, but can they have the power to heal? At a time when burnout is rife among practicing physicians and other clinicians, health care organizations are introducing systemic changes, including wellness programs. Beyond this, though, what might individual clinicians do to stave off burnout and fuel emotional resilience? New research suggests burnout relief may be as close at hand as a good novel. Reading for pleasure--especially, reading literary fiction--seems to enhance empathy and combat emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, thereby improving doctors' abilities to connect with the persons who are their patients and find joy in their work. Indeed, if reading for relaxation makes such a difference, should reading literature be a prescribed part of physician education and training? In this Medical Center Hour, Drs. Daniel Marchalik and Hunter Groninger examine emerging research on books' benefits for doctors and trace their own experience with the Literature and Medicine track at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Whistle Words is a multimedia project helping women reclaim their sense of self after a life-changing cancer diagnosis--with the simple aid of a pen. Charlottesville-based Whistle Words offers writing workshops for women in and after cancer treatment. Being part of this project as an adjunct or follow-up to treatment can make a real difference in participants' outlook and healing, as demonstrated by women's writings in the recently published anthology, Truth: Voices of Women Changed by Cancer. In this Medical Center Hour, Whistle Words' co-founder Charlotte Matthews and UVA nurse/breast cancer survivor/workshop participant Susan Goins-Eplee introduce Whistle Words and explore the healing power of writing.
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
January 23, 2019
Joe Richman
Since 1996, the Radio Diaries project has been giving people audio recorders and working with them to report on their own lives and histories. Collaborating with teens and octogenarians, persons with chronic and terminal illness, prisoners and prison guards, gospel preachers and bra saleswomen, the famous and the unknown, the project tells extraordinary stories of ordinary life. With stories aired on NPR, BBC, This American Life, and its own podcast, Radio Diaries has pioneered a new form of citizen journalism and, along the way, garnered every major award in broadcast journalism. This Medical Center Hour welcomes Radio Diaries’ founding director, Joe Richman, to share stories and draw parallels with health care practice, where, daily, clinicians traffic in the “extraordinary stories of ordinary life.”
The Edward W. Hook Lecture in Medicine and the Arts / Medical Grand Rounds
Co-presented with the Department of Medicine, UVA
The 1918 influenza pandemic was a global calamity that brought death on an unprecedented scale and intensified the devastating impact of World War I even as the armistice was signed in November 1918. Statistics tell the tale of this flu in one way, science tells it in another, but this Medical Center Hour—the third in a mini-series marking the pandemic's centenary—lets poetry speak to the human toll exacted by the 1918 H1N1 virus. In 1995, Virginia native and distinguished poet Ellen Bryant Voigt published Kyrie, a book-length sequence of poems in which small town speakers live through the harrowing epidemic and remember, defy, and mourn. Kyrie's fierce, moving poetry brings the global calamity home. In this Medical Center Hour, Voigt (on video) reads selections from Kyrie and discusses with poet Marianne Boruch the making and meaning of this American masterpiece.
Co-presented with the Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry, Historical Collections in the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, and Influenza! 1918-2018
Lucy Kalanithi is many things. Physician. Professor. Writer, and speaker. Mother. Widow. She was married for nine years to Dr. Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, the illness that claimed his life in 2015 at age thirty-seven. As he struggled, suffered, and worried, Paul wrote. His memoir—When Breath Becomes Air, for which Lucy wrote the epilogue—became a bestseller after it was published in 2016.
In this Medical Center Hour, which is also the School of Nursing's annual Bice Memorial Lecture, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi talks with UVA Nursing Professor Ken White about the Kalanithis' challenging journey to the end of Paul's life and how Paul and Lucy did not avoid suffering but, rather, leaned into it and created meaning from it.
The Zula Mae Baber Bice Memorial Lecture
Co-presented with the School of Nursing
The year 2018 marks the centennial of the "Spanish" influenza pandemic, the world's deadliest event, killing at least 50 million persons worldwide. This pandemic's sudden emergence and high fatality are stark reminders of the threat influenza has posed to human health and society for more than a millennium. Unusual features of the 1918-1919 outbreak, such as the age-specific mortality pattern and unexpectedly high frequency of severe and fatal pneumonias, are still not fully understood. But the recent sequencing and reconstruction of the 1918 virus—work accomplished by NIH scientist Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues—have yielded answers to crucial questions about the virus's origin and pathogenicity. In this Hayden-Farr Lecture at Medical Center Hour, Dr. Taubenberger summarizes key findings, considers yet-to-be answered questions about the 1918 influenza, and looks ahead to 21st century public health preparedness and the need to optimize preventive vaccines and vaccination strategies.
The Hayden-Farr Lecture in Epidemiology and Virology/Medical Grand Rounds/History of the Health Sciences Lecture
Co-presented with the Department of Medicine, Historical Collections in the Health Sciences Library, and Influenza! 1918-2018
This Richardson Memorial Lecture's origins are the hospital death of infant Lola Jayden Fitch and her family's journey to evoke change. The hour is anchored in the stories of Lola's parents--her mother, who questioned her intuition, and her father, who chose to continue working in the hospital where Lola's death occurred--and in a review of medical staff communication errors that tragically affected Lola's care.
How can we prevent communication breakdowns, improve teamwork, and foster greater transparency and true partnership with families to make health care better and safer, especially for the most vulnerable patients? How can Lola's Song and similar stories--those of patients, families, health professionals, and others--help us to accomplish this important work?
www.lolassong.com
The Jessie Stewart Richardson Memorial Lecture of the School of Medicine
Co-presented with the Office of Quality and Performance Improvement, UVA Health System
What if there were a vaccine that could prevent cancer? The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, available since 2006, does this, guarding against cancers caused by this ubiquitous virus. This Medical Center Hour explores the sociopolitical context of HPV vaccination in Virginia and beyond. Using clips from a powerful documentary film, Someone You Love: The HPV Epidemic (2014), an expert panel of UVA researchers, clinicians, and oncologists discusses the crucial importance of HPV vaccination--for boys as well as girls--and the concerns that still limit its use.
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
Co-presented with the Cancer Center, UVA
Many personal, social, organizational, and regulatory factors in health care today contribute to clinicians experiencing burnout, a chronic stress syndrome characterized by exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of inadequacy. When severe, these symptoms are often accompanied and exacerbated by depression—and sometimes lead to suicide. In this combined Medical Center Hour and Medical Grand Rounds, Dean Gianakos MD FACP will not teach techniques to fortify personal resilience in the face of incipient burnout or offer strategies to reduce the inefficiencies of practice. Rather, using poems and stories, he will open a dialogue on how health professionals can emotionally support one another, initiate crucial conversations, and reduce the isolation that too often characterizes medical practice.
Co-presented with the Department of Medicine, UVA
Thirty years ago, the medical school at East Carolina University created a readers' theater program in which short stories about medicine were adapted as theatrical scripts. Medical students performed a story by reading it aloud, then actors and audience--often a community group--together discussed the drama and the ethical and social issues it raised. These plays and post-performance discussions enlivened and changed how future physicians and audiences--prospective patients all--approached and learned from one another.
The best way to learn about medical readers' theater? Just do it. In this Medical Center Hour, UVA medical student actors present a dramatic reading of physician-poet William Carlos Williams's 1938 short story, "A Face of Stone." Following the performance, the audience joins in, as everyone responds to and discusses the play and the ethical, social, and cultural concerns it explores.
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
Co-presented with the Sloane Society for Medical Humanities, UVA