Submission Medium: audio

La crisis de agua potable en Uruguay

This NPR podcast examines a health issue that often goes overlooked: access to potable water. The water crisis plagued a town in Montevideo Uruguay for three months. This coincided with one of the worst droughts in 40 years. This podcast focuses on how the water shortage affected children at a school in Salinas which is a small town. It explores health problems grounded in infrastructure. It features personal stories and experiences of the students through interviews that show the how lack of access to potable water affects children. Transcript available in Spanish will help intermediate learners follow spoken language.

Wake Up

This song expresses the desire to discover that a diagnosis of cancer is not real, to "wake up" from the experience and emotions of approaching and fighting illness to discover it's been a nightmare, rather than one's new reality. The song is from the musical, Club Meds, which tells the stories of three people affected by cancer and by each other. Songs can be powerful tools for teaching by providing emotional resonance, perspective, and connection to a topic that can otherwise feel isolating or clinical. Lyrical stories engage emotions in ways that data or factual information alone often cannot. In "Wake Up," pace, rhythm, and repetition convey feelings of wanting to deny or resist a diagnosis yet being forced to come to terms with it. Stories of illness told in song can also allow individuals to connect with themes of mortality and end-of-life on a personal level, creating empathy for the fear or stigma associated with these topics. This can be especially beneficial in communities where discussing mortality is a cultural taboo. Mortality-themed lyrical stories can normalize discussions around death and dying. In a community setting, they can facilitate support groups or workshops where people feel safe to discuss these topics openly. In clinics, they can make patients and families feel more comfortable asking questions or expressing concerns about end-of-life care options. For both patients and families, lyrical stories about mortality can provide solace and a way to process grief. They serve as a form of art therapy, encouraging reflection and emotional release, which can be healing during or after the grieving process.

Together Well: Documenting COVID’s Impact through Storytelling

Together Well is an online collection of stories (some audio and written but most video) about experiences of COVID. This collaboration between the Relational Leadership Institute (www.relatelab.org) and the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative (nwnmcollaborative.org) was designed to "collectively make sense of the pandemic’s impact on all members of the community: nurses, social workers, patients, family members, doctors, caregivers, students, chaplains, scholars, educators, activists, and artists." In addition, the stories were assembled in the hope that reflecting on pandemic experiences can provide a basis for change in healthcare and communities that "better center connection, relationships, and well-being." Stories document not only hardship but also ways that the COVID crisis led teams, communities, and individuals to innovate, collaborate, and change in powerful ways that we may wish to continue as we move forward. The 37 stories in the collection are listed on the webpage; each has a thumbnail and an image. There is also a video (the first entry in the collection) about the project. Stories are brief enough to show in a class or workshop. The videos are hosted on YouTube so it is possible to provide closed captioning and transcripts are also available.

LitMed: Literature Arts Medicine Database

Scholars, educators, patients, students, and anyone interested in medical humanities can search this site for annotated entries that describe works of literature, fine art, visual art and performing art related to medicine. Housed at the NYU School of Medicine, the annotations are written by an editoral board of medical humanities scholars from across North America. Users of the site can search by words or phrases of their own, peruse an alphabetical index of titles, or use the extensive system of tags. It is possible to narrow a search to a particular kind of work (e.g., "All visual arts" or just photography, painting/drawing, or sculpture) or to medical humanities topics (e.g., history of medicine, medical anthropology, science and medicine). Stories by "physician" or "nurse" can also be searched. The site has over 3000 items at the time of this submission. An entry includes a summary description of the work as well as a commentary.

The ones we sent away

The author found out at age 12 that her mother had a sister who was institutionalized before age 2 with intellectual disabilities that left her unable to speak. She traces her aunt's life through various institutions, most of them deplorable, and hears her mother's grief over the separation from her only sibling. She contrasts the attitudes and treatment of such disabilities in the 1950's through the 1980's with much more open acceptance and inclusion of nonverbal persons in the 2020's, based on a photo that went viral on Twitter. Detailed memoir of three generations' relationships with the sister: the author's grandmother, her mother, and herself. Traces the evolution of attitudes toward intellectual disabilities in the 20th and 21st centuries from close relationship to the issue, noting that children born today with her aunt's condition are able to live much fuller lives because of greater inclusion in educational, social and family contexts. Includes many links to relevant sources, from memoir to scientific works. About 15 pages; also has audio version.

Former Anti-Vaccine Mom Explains How Movement Pulled Her In, And How She Left

This NPR interview discusses Lydia's journey from being initially pro-vaccine to joining the anti-vaccination movement after a traumatic experience with her first child's vaccinations. She describes how online forums fueled her fears, leading her to reject vaccines for her subsequent children. However, Lydia's perspective shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting her to research and ultimately decide to vaccinate her children. The story highlights the role of misinformation in the anti-vaccine movement, the challenges faced by healthcare professionals combating disinformation, and the impact of social media. Lydia's experience also emphasizes the need for open dialogue, fact-based education, and addressing vaccine hesitancy. The interview concludes with Lydia expressing her newfound motivation to pursue nursing school to help educate new parents about vaccines. Both audio and written transcript are available. Lydia’s story would be relevant to health-related courses or discussions related to vaccination, healthcare decision-making, and the impact of misinformation.

Neurodivergent Narratives

Sandra Coral is a student, teacher, writer, podcaster, and learner all about neurodivergence. They have multiple social media sites (instagram, twitter, Facebook) that are publically accessible and focus on promoting education and awareness about neurodivergence. She is autistic and has ADHD and shares her own experiences via through written posts, videos, and podcasts on topics such as sensory processing, fitting in, masking, and burnout. Sandras’s sites could be utilized in a classroom setting as narratives from someone who is neurodivergent told in their own voice. The link below is to the Facebook page, where the About profile provides links to other platforms. Her social media posts are useful not only for discussing neurodivergent narratives, but also for reflecting on what constitutes a narrative (small individual posts retelling everyday life? the accumulation of posts over time?). In contrast, her Substack includes longer posts that more clearly resemble stories.

Teaching with “The Nocturnist”

Podcast series created by physician Emily Silverman that focuses on humanizing medical practice through healthcare workers' storytelling. Some topics: interview with author of a book on forced sterilization, "Black Voices in Healthcare" and "Post-Roe America". Episodes run 35-55 minutes; first 10-15 is story, the rest is wide-ranging interviews about (e.g.) why did you become a doctor? With related interview (see Farrell, 2022) could be used both to discuss storytelling as a way to address burnout, and to introduce oral history interviews.

“A lifespan the length of a dog’s”: Illness as loss in the novel So Much for That

"The clinic and the person" is a podcast series that follows Russell Teagarden's blog "According to the Arts," in which he juxtaposes clinical descriptions of illness and disability with literary texts about characters who live with those conditions. In the podcast, he and another medical professional discuss the condition that is the focus of each episode based on their medical experience, and react to the literary text as attentive, sensitive readers. This episode based on the novel, So Much for That, brings discussion of various ways catastrophic illness puts an end to a family's plans: economically, physically, socially. The website describes the goal of the series as: "developed to summon or quicken the attention of health care professionals, their educators, researchers and others to the interests and plights of people with specific health problems aided through knowledge and perspectives the humanities provide. ... The Clinic represents all that Biomedicine brings to bear on disease processes and treatment protocols, and The Person, represents all that people experience from health problems. Our episodes draw from works in the humanities--any genres that relate directly to how people are affected by specific clinical events such as migraine headaches, epileptic seizures, and dementia, and by specific health care situations such as restricted access to care and gut-wrenching, life and death choices. We analyze and interpret featured works and provide thoughts on how they apply in patient care and support; health professions education; clinical and population research; health care policy; and social and cultural influences and reactions."

Please See Me

Online literary journal that features health-related stories in the form of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art, as well as the occasional film and interview. Issues include multiple works around a specific theme (e.g., Pain, Hope, Mental Health, Women's Health). Work features voices of patients, providers and "healthcare consumers" from their own experiences and perspectives. Written submissions are 4000 word maximum. Examples of featured works include: A mixed media art piece on pain, grief, and hopelessness from an artist dealing with loss and addiction (lil peep in Issue #2: Pain), a poem about medical debt ("Johns Hopkins Sues Patients, Many Low-Income, for Medical Debt" in Issue #9: Open Call), and a mother’s experience raising a son with intellectual disabilities and grappling with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis (Forgetting Aiden in Issue #1: Conversation).