Partners in Health,

Doctors without Borders (MSF),

and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

As a faculty which honors the central role of narrative in health care, we feel this is also a time to listen to the voices of Haiti's storytellers.  Here is a link to a piece by Edwidge Danticat published in The New Yorker the week of January 26, 2010:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/02/01/100201taco_talk_danticat

Master of Science in Narrative Medicine

Columbia University will launch a new Master of Science in Narrative Medicine in fall of 2009. Narrative medicine is an emerging clinical discipline that fortifies the practice of doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists, and other caregivers with the knowledge of how to interpret and respond to their patients' stories. “At a time when all news about health care is discouraging," says Dr. Rita Charon, who directs the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia and will be teaching in the new masters program, “this exciting event should give heart to sick people and those who care for them that patients can be heard, clinicians nourished, and deep health reached.” Proud to be the first degree program of its kind, this important educational advance improves the  quality of patient care and contributes to the healing of our ailing health care system itself.

Click here to read the official program announcement and go to www.ce.columbia.edu/ narrativemedicine to learn more about program of study, courses, faculty, and admissions. For further information, contact Program Director Marsha Hurst at mh812@columbia.edu or call Continuing Education 212-854-9699.

Applications invited for NIH/Narrative Medicine Summer Research Fellowship

The Summer Research Fellowships in Narrative Medicine are awarded to current Columbia P&S students for research in topics related to narrative medicine and social medicine. Stipends of $3,500 are provided through the NIH K07 Award on social science and behavioral science in medicine in partnership with the Program in Narrative Medicine. Students are invited to submit proposals for 10-week projects centered on issues of narrative medicine and related areas, and if selected, will be expected to carry out the research under the oversight of a mentor. The research should have the potential to be ongoing, as these stipends will provide the opportunity of continued mentorship and research beyond the scope of the summer—as such, projects are limited to work accomplished at Columbia or in other areas of New York City. A final report is due at the conclusion of the ten weeks.

The NIH/Narrative Medicine Summer Research Fellowships are jointly funded by the NIH K07 award “Human Behavior and Experience in Health and Illness” and the Program in Narrative Medicine. The K award has supported intensive curricular and faculty development for the Clinical Practice Course at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

For more information, click here.

Request for Proposals: Writing Workshop Grants

The practice of narrative writing has become widespread at Columbia University Medical Center as a means for clinicians and trainees to reflect on clinical experience, to understand patients’ situations, and to develop into effective health care teams. Writing groups help us communicate among ourselves and with patients while, almost uncannily, they give us purpose and pleasure. These groups can function as an antidote to the fragmented, depersonalized frenzy that can fill our days here. Many departments, clinical training programs, and in-patient and out-patient clinical settings have approached faculty from the Program in Narrative Medicine for guidance and writing teachers as they develop clinical writing programs. We would like to support these efforts, and we would like our medical center to learn from these teaching efforts by gathering evidence of the outcomes of these writing seminars on both patients’ and professionals’ satisfaction and well-being. 

The Program in Narrative Medicine invites applications for grants of up to $5000 for clinical divisions of CUMC who wish to engage in ongoing writing workshops in clinical settings and to study the outcomes of the effort. These workshops should be multi-disciplinary, team-building groups, made up of clinicians from all corners of a division’s staff.  Proposals will also be considered from multi-year resident groups or the equivalent in other disciplines. Applying groups should demonstrate evidence of a sustainable commitment to the work, planning to meeting no less than once or twice a month over a period of six months to a year with at least 10 persons committed to the process. Typical expenses include costs of books, writing materials, and snacks as well as stipends for a writing coach and a qualitative methodologist who can assist in learning from the outcomes of the work. Priority will be given to departments that demonstrate a need for the particular team-oriented, story- and language-based growth that a workshop can provide. 

If you are interested in learning more about this new initiative, please contact:

Nellie Hermann

Chief, Writing Faculty

Program in Narrative Medicine

212.305.4975

ngh2101@columbia.edu 

Narrative Medicine Rounds, first Wednesday of each month from September to June at 5-7:00 pm in Faculty Club of CUMC.  446 P&S Building 630 West 168th Street (between Broadway and Fort Washington Avenue) New York, NY 10032.

 

February 3, 2010

Robin Romm

The Mercy Papers: A Memoir in Three Weeks

Romm reads from her acclaimed book The Mercy Papers, written about the three weeks prior to her mother’s death. The memoir was named a Notable Book of 2009 by The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle, and one of the Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Year by Entertainment Weekly.  Her story collection, The Mother Garden, was a finalist for the PEN USA Prize.  Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The UK Observer, Tin House, One Story, and other periodicals.  In a front cover review, the New York Times Book review called it “a furious blaze of a book.” 

 

Narrative Medicine Workshops

The Program in Narrative Medicine offers intensive small group three-day workshops for health care professionals and literary scholars engaged in narrative medicine practice. Our next workshop will be held at Columbia University on March 26-28, 2010. If you are interested in attending our March workshop, please click on the link above for full information about the program and for the link to registration. We thank you for your interest in our program and for making it such a wonderful success.

If you need further information or to be placed on the waiting list for future workshops kindly get in contact with me either by phone or email.

Craig Irvine

212-304-7213

ci44@columbia.edu