Tuesday, Oct. 29 | 2:00-2:45 p.m. | General Session
Ken Browne, Founder & Producer at Ken Browne Productions
Audrey Shafer, MD, Director of Stanford Medicine & the Muse Program; Professor, Stanford Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine / VAPAHCS; Co-Director, Biomedical Ethics and Medical Humanities Scholarly Concentration, Stanford School of Medicine
Amy Ship, MD, MA, Director, Atrius Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Department of Population Medicine Primary Care Residency Program
Susan Ball, MD, MPH, MS, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College; Assistant Director of the Bernbaum Unit, Center for Special Studies New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Deepthiman Gowda, MD, MPH, MS, Assistant Dean for Medical Education, Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine
WHY DOCTORS WRITE: FINDING HUMANITY IN MEDICINE is a soon-to-be-released documentary, about the growing movement in medicine to use writing, humanities, and the arts as means to support practicing clinicians and prepare medical students for an increasingly challenging healthcare environment. What began as “medical humanities” in the late 1970s has blossomed into myriad 21st century programs such as Narrative Medicine, physician writing groups, on-line medical student journals, observation skill training in art museums, and reflective writing seminars in medical school and pre-med curricula. Some of today’s leading writer-MDs appear in the film. The Gold Summit presents a preview of the film, followed by a panel discussion with the film director and four prominent physician-writers/educators who appear in the film.
Audrey Shafer, MD is Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine / Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System; founder and director, Stanford Medicine & the Muse Program, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics; co-director, Biomedical Ethics and Medical Humanities Scholarly Concentration; and co-founder of Pegasus Physician Writers. Originally from Philadelphia, she completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard University, medical school at Stanford, anesthesiology training at University of Pennsylvania, and research fellowship at Stanford. Courses she teaches include Medical Humanities and the Arts. She is the author of The Mailbox, a children’s novel on posttraumatic stress disorder in veterans. Her poetry on anesthesia, health humanities and family life has been published in journals and anthologies and heard on NPR.
Dr. Amy Ship is an internist and educator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Since 2007, Dr. Ship has led workshops for clinicians using literature to encourage discussion of complex issues and to enhance empathy. She facilitates the “Literature and Medicine” program sponsored by the Massachusetts Council for the Humanities at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Ship has received numerous awards for teaching, mentoring, and humanism, including the Kenneth Schwartz Compassionate Caregiver of the Year Award and the S. Robert Stone Award for Excellence in Teaching from HMS and BIDMC.)
Dr. Susan Ball is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City where she has been taking care of patients with HIV for nearly three decades. Her book on the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, “Voices in the Band” was published by the Cornell University Press in 2015. Dr. Ball earned a Masters of Science degree in Narrative Medicine from Columbia in 2011. She has been teaching Narrative Medicine in different formats to students, residents and faculty and her work in the topic has been presented at conferences here and abroad.
As the Assistant Dean for Medical Education, Dr. Gowda is involved in designing and implementing as well as providing oversight for the curriculum in collaboration with the Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education and other faculty members.