Severely detaching your retina is a scary matter. But Johanna Shapiro found a way through the fear and uncertainty, thanks in no small part to the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
“I almost lost my sight,” said Shapiro, a psychologist and professor at the University of California at Irvine College of Medicine, referring to her situation in 1996. “I did what many people would do. I researched all of the literature [which is a lot when your library is based at a medical school].
“I found out my likely prognosis and became knowledgeable about my condition. The more I read, the more I got depressed.”
Then a friend–and make no mistake, a loving friend–handed her a copy of Dickinson poems.
The exact collection or specific poems aren’t important. It was “listening” to Dickinson’s “voice” that moved Shapiro away from becoming overwrought about her potential loss of sight in one eye.
“Her poems consoled me,” Shapiro said. “I did get better, but I was out of work for three months. When I returned to the medical school, I knew I had to teach differently.”
Before the detached retina, Shapiro taught elective classes about patient-doctor relationships by such methods as discussing the latest research studies and getting the medical students to engage in role playing.
It was important work but no longer enough for Shapiro.
“We would talk about the research showing physicians with poor communications skills are more likely to be be sued,” recalled Shapiro, 53. “We worked on developing better listening and communication skills.”
Not a bad idea, if you ask most patients.
But Shapiro was determined to bring Emily Dickinson into her course syllabus. In fact, she thought it would be valuable, maybe even transformational, to bring all sorts of literature into the classroom and medical students’ lives.
She pulled together a list of short stories, novel excerpts and first-person narratives from the patient’s point of view. She found a deep pool of potential material and realized this approach might just be an effective way to “humanize medicine” for the medical students.
More Top Picks Cremo Spice Black Vanilla Cologne For Men
Wonderful idea if you ask me.
The reading list for Shapiro’s “medical humanities” course includes such authors as Phillip Roth (his “Epstein” short story is a centerpiece for the unit on cardiac disease), Raymond Carver (pages 329 to 345 in his book “Cathedral” introduce disability from the patient’s perspective), and Alice Walker (pages 76 to 82 in “Strong Horse Tea” encourage discussion on cross-cultural medicine). Anatole Broyard’s first-person account “The Patient Examines the Doctor,” which is found in his book “Intoxicated by My Illness,” is Shapiro’s gold standard for using literature to show future doctors what their patients might be feeling and thinking but not saying.
“Reading good literature or seeing a wonderful painting brings out emotions at various levels,” Shapiro said. “It gets past the physical. A lot of what we do is involve our students in the creative-writing process and get them thinking and feeling. They write their own poems.”
Funny thing, when Shapiro decided she wanted to bring literature into the Cal-Irvine curriculum, she wasn’t aware that medical humanities was a discipline that already existed in some form during the last three decades. But it hasn’t intimidated Shapiro from joining the movement.
She has developed an innovative program that introduces a first-year, 12-week course (26 of a possible 92 students elected it this fall) and includes seminars, small-group discussion and individual writing projects in Years 2 through 4 of the medical training. Even residents can stay involved.
What’s more, Shapiro has organized professional and academic conferences to discuss “how good literary reading and expressive writing skills can complement and enhance good doctoring skills.” Lester Friedman, senior lecturer in the communication and medicine program in Northwestern University’s department of radio/TV/film was a featured speaker at a 2001 conference.
Shapiro said it is important for medical humanities courses to be relevant for the doctors in training. She hunts out literature that highlights patients’ feelings about illness or such medical events as a doctor breaking bad news to a person who is dying. Conditions covered include cancer, AIDS, mental illness and alcoholism.
Her goal is simple yet difficult.
“The medical process tends to lead many doctors to stop seeing people and then see patients,” Shapiro said. “Then doctors stop seeing patients and see [the patients as] diseases instead.
“Reading literature is an effective way for physicians to learn more about patients and themselves. We all become people again.”