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
