Tag: narrative medicine

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).

Syllabus Spanish Health Narratives

This 3000-level course is of particular interest to Spanish majors and minors with health professions interests, although readings and assignments are aimed at any Spanish student with intermediate level proficiency. Creative writing majors from English, students interested in editing and publishing, International Studies and Global Health Studies majors, Communication Studies majors with general interests in health, all have succeeded. Readings are from Latinx and Latin American authors; some in English, many in Spanish. Assignments are four creative writing projects, one that becomes a digital video.

Art + Medicine | Speaking of Race

This one hour PBS broadcast features voices of many physicians of color at the University of Minnesota. Each physician talks about instances of race impacting their practice as well as the care that patients of color receive. It begins discussion of why race is important to talk about in health care and ends on each provider’s favorite aspect of teaching and medicine.

COVID-19 through the Eyes of a Black Medical Student

Shuaibu Ali is a medical student who reflects on how his experiences growing up in an urban environment increased his risk for various health conditions. He makes the case for the importance of personal stories from individuals from historically marginalized groups as a way of personalizing statistics on health disparities and exposing conditions that create them.

I have used this essay in an undergraduate narrative medicine practicum class to prompt discussion about the importance of hearing stories from marginalized groups and the power of story to mobilize social change.