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“Sock Drawer Stories” – PTSD and Frontline Providers
Brian Goldman is a veteran ER physician who hosts a weekly show on CBC Radio called White Coat, Black Art. During each episode, he describes — and illuminates — the health care system from “my side of the gurney.” A few weeks ago, I listened to Goldman’s powerful piece about incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder…
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Improvisation in Practice – lessons from music class?
This past year I participated in a weekly class called The Art & Practice of Relational Improvisation: a drumming journey into the wild and beautiful unknown facilitated by drumming teacher and expressive arts therapist Shara Claire. During our small group sessions my fellow students and I learned two kinds of skills: technical (e.g., hand drum…
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Lessons on empathy from a medical actor
Empathy is a lot more nuanced and complex than people sometimes assume. There are many theories about what empathy is, what it looks like and how to foster it. Brené Brown’s work on empathy, including the The Power of Empathy video and her TED talk, has brought this topic to a larger audience, and encourages…
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Writing and the body: what’s the connection?
In 1667, when philosopher Baruch Spinoza proclaimed “no one has yet determined what the body can do,” he was, perhaps, heralding recent attention to the body in social science, education and therapy practices. The critical issue for these fields is the presence and role of the physical body in disciplines that have traditionally privileged the…
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Listening with our pens
One of my virtual mentors in the field of narrative medicine is Sayantani DasGupta. I’ve never met her, but her work has shaped my thinking about the critical role of narrative in healthcare. DasGupta is interested in the role of stories in healthcare and spends much of her time as a professor of medical humanities…