RESOURCES

Below are some resources provided by featured doctor-writers in the film to facilitate writing and reading practices for healthcare providers, educators/students, and the general public:

The Bellevue Literary Review provides these reading guides:

blreview.org/the-journal/reading-guides/

The Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia provides resources that create community including Live Virtual Group Sessions, Narrative Medicine Book Club,  Narrative Medicine Web Resources: 

narrativemedicine.blog

The Medicine & the Muse Program at Stanford provides these resources: 

Writing Medicine:

Reflective writing sessions for healthcare workers and their loved ones in the time of Covid-19

www.laurelbraitman.com/writingmedicine

Dr. Audrey Shafer: Creative Writing Exercise – The Patient Examines the Doctor:

This prompt focuses on the perspective of the other. You can write from a patient or family member perspective in a clinical encounter, or you can choose an entirely different setting: the dog examines its ‘owner’, the child examines the parent, the barista examines the customer, etc. Use any genre. 
As an example, read the New York Times piece Doctor Talk to Me by Anatole Broyard. Broyard died of prostate cancer in 1990, the same year as the publication.

Note that Broyard not only gives specific, detailed visual descriptions (“he had a pink, soft face and blue eyes”), but also interprets those in unique ways “He reminded me of a salesman with nothing to sell but his inoffensiveness.” These help the reader get a better understanding of the narrator’s perspective.

Try imagining a scenario, then writing some physical descriptions of the scene including objects and people, and then think about how the person you are trying to inhabit responds to the situation.

Broyard’s essay is a long example; don’t feel like you need to write anything nearly this long. In fact, it’s good to give yourself a time limit to respond to the prompt, such as 10-12 minutes.

NOTE: see http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/226 for an annotation of Intoxicated by My Illness by Anatole Broyard, a collection of essays like this.