Physician, write thyself
Tessa Ruddy - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 4/24/07 Section: Arts
- Page 1 of 1
Birth, illness, and death become routine to doctors. Many learn to stifle their emotions, becoming distant prescription-scribblers who view their patients as walking lists of ailments and statistics. In order to preserve their sanity, says David Watts, a California gastroenterologist, those working in the medical field often forget that they are dealing with human beings.
"I've been puzzled as to why we have such fabulously integrated and emotionally competent [medical school] applicants, and by the third year of medical school, they had turned to stone," said Watts, also a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. "I think there's something about the process of education in which science is so deluged and the humanities are so ignored. It creates an imbalance."
Watts will be joined by Rutgers University English professor and poet Rachel Hadas, as well as many other colleagues from the medical and writing worlds at the conference "The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine," which will commence today and run through Wednesday at the UI Carver College of Medicine Writing Program. Doctors and writers will join forces to discuss the benefits of integrating the literature into medical-school curriculum, which aids students in becoming well-rounded, emotionally available physicians who incorporate writing into their careers.
"In medical school, they say don't make friends with your patients, and I think that's baloney," Watts said. "It allows you to have a much more profound effect within the life and disease of the person you are working with."
This emotional engagement, he said, is first achieved through the humanities. Medical students, through literature, are able to experience a profundity they may not be courageous or strong enough to confront when faced with grave illness or death. Watts asserts that he is a different, much better physician after discovering this in himself through his own writing.
There is a balance of an emotional relationship and distance that must be maintained between physician and patient, he said. He calls this the "doubleness factor."
"You're doing two things at once," he said. "You're able to engage and attach to the emotional current of the patient and at the same time stay distant. There is something within you that will develop that allows you to make yourself vulnerable in the presence of heavy emotions and still come through it without personal damage."
He will discuss this and the practice of what he dubs "deep medicine" by reading excerpts from his book Bedside Manners.
Hadas, another keynote speaker and the author of more than a half-dozen books, has taught literature and writing courses at both Columbia and Princeton. While she is not a physician, her experience with the declining health of her loved ones informs her work: Hadas' father died when she was 17, and her husband is very ill with a dementia similar to Alzheimer's at the age of 64.
"I was just sort of interested in the phenomena of illness and death. It's very connected to writing and poetry," she said. "One of the things poetry is really good for is elegy and expressing feelings. I'm sort of an elegiac poet by nature."
Writing helps Hadas deal with her husband's illness and the lack of an immediate cure.
From January to June of this year, she has been meeting - and will meet - once a month with doctors and medical students in a "Literature and Medicine" group organized by the New Jersey Council on the Humanities. Hadas assigns readings and uses the topics discussed to launch into other medical-related discussions, including how a doctor delivers bad news or how it feels to be a patient or a caretaker.
"I think that having a relationship with a patient is seen as an advantage and not a liability," she said. "That's part of the thinking behind this new movement. The better the doctor knows the patient, the better the doctor will be able to care for the patient."
E-mail DI reporter Tessa Ruddy at:
tessa-ruddy@uiowa.edu
The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine
General Registration: $125
Non-UI Students: $75
UI Faculty and Staff: $30
UI Students: Free
Today's Keynote Speakers
Opening Plenary Session
David Watts, "Some Things Writing Can do for Medicine"
When: 9 a.m.
Where: 2117 Medical Education and Research Facility
Admission: Free
Playwright M.F.A. Maggie Conroy, "Sailing Into Iowa: A Dramatic Reading"
When: 12:15 p.m.
Where: UI health-sciences campus, Medical Education and Research Facility atrium
Admission: Free
Poet Rachel Hadas, "Notes from the Kingdom of Illness"
When: 5:30 p.m.
Where: UI Museum of Art
Admission: $10
Wednesday
Keynote Speaker
Ethan Canin, "Oxidation of Squalene by Squalene Epoxidase to Form 2,3-Oxidosqualene, or, How I Left Medicine for Writing"
When: 12:30 p.m.
Where: Medical Education and Research Facility atrium
Admission: Free
To see all the scheduled events, register online at:.
"I've been puzzled as to why we have such fabulously integrated and emotionally competent [medical school] applicants, and by the third year of medical school, they had turned to stone," said Watts, also a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. "I think there's something about the process of education in which science is so deluged and the humanities are so ignored. It creates an imbalance."
Watts will be joined by Rutgers University English professor and poet Rachel Hadas, as well as many other colleagues from the medical and writing worlds at the conference "The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine," which will commence today and run through Wednesday at the UI Carver College of Medicine Writing Program. Doctors and writers will join forces to discuss the benefits of integrating the literature into medical-school curriculum, which aids students in becoming well-rounded, emotionally available physicians who incorporate writing into their careers.
"In medical school, they say don't make friends with your patients, and I think that's baloney," Watts said. "It allows you to have a much more profound effect within the life and disease of the person you are working with."
This emotional engagement, he said, is first achieved through the humanities. Medical students, through literature, are able to experience a profundity they may not be courageous or strong enough to confront when faced with grave illness or death. Watts asserts that he is a different, much better physician after discovering this in himself through his own writing.
There is a balance of an emotional relationship and distance that must be maintained between physician and patient, he said. He calls this the "doubleness factor."
"You're doing two things at once," he said. "You're able to engage and attach to the emotional current of the patient and at the same time stay distant. There is something within you that will develop that allows you to make yourself vulnerable in the presence of heavy emotions and still come through it without personal damage."
He will discuss this and the practice of what he dubs "deep medicine" by reading excerpts from his book Bedside Manners.
Hadas, another keynote speaker and the author of more than a half-dozen books, has taught literature and writing courses at both Columbia and Princeton. While she is not a physician, her experience with the declining health of her loved ones informs her work: Hadas' father died when she was 17, and her husband is very ill with a dementia similar to Alzheimer's at the age of 64.
"I was just sort of interested in the phenomena of illness and death. It's very connected to writing and poetry," she said. "One of the things poetry is really good for is elegy and expressing feelings. I'm sort of an elegiac poet by nature."
Writing helps Hadas deal with her husband's illness and the lack of an immediate cure.
From January to June of this year, she has been meeting - and will meet - once a month with doctors and medical students in a "Literature and Medicine" group organized by the New Jersey Council on the Humanities. Hadas assigns readings and uses the topics discussed to launch into other medical-related discussions, including how a doctor delivers bad news or how it feels to be a patient or a caretaker.
"I think that having a relationship with a patient is seen as an advantage and not a liability," she said. "That's part of the thinking behind this new movement. The better the doctor knows the patient, the better the doctor will be able to care for the patient."
E-mail DI reporter Tessa Ruddy at:
tessa-ruddy@uiowa.edu
The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine
General Registration: $125
Non-UI Students: $75
UI Faculty and Staff: $30
UI Students: Free
Today's Keynote Speakers
Opening Plenary Session
David Watts, "Some Things Writing Can do for Medicine"
When: 9 a.m.
Where: 2117 Medical Education and Research Facility
Admission: Free
Playwright M.F.A. Maggie Conroy, "Sailing Into Iowa: A Dramatic Reading"
When: 12:15 p.m.
Where: UI health-sciences campus, Medical Education and Research Facility atrium
Admission: Free
Poet Rachel Hadas, "Notes from the Kingdom of Illness"
When: 5:30 p.m.
Where: UI Museum of Art
Admission: $10
Wednesday
Keynote Speaker
Ethan Canin, "Oxidation of Squalene by Squalene Epoxidase to Form 2,3-Oxidosqualene, or, How I Left Medicine for Writing"
When: 12:30 p.m.
Where: Medical Education and Research Facility atrium
Admission: Free
To see all the scheduled events, register online at:
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