Murmurs: the journal of art and healing

In an era of unprecedented physician burnout and disconnection, there is growing recognition of the importance of integrating the study of humanities in medicine. Emerging research has underscored the importance of reflective writing and creativity in bolstering physician resilience. The publication “Murmurs Magazine,” therefore, should be of great interest to medical educators. This publication was developed and continues to be managed by medical students as a forum for creative expression and reflection.

Listening to and letting pain speak: poetic reflections

The humanities invite opportunities for people to describe through their metaphors, symbols and language a means in which to interpret their pain and reinterpret their new lived experiences. The patient and family all live with pain and can only use their pain narratives of that experience to confront or even to begin to understand the quantifiable discipline of medicine. The patient and family narratives act to retain meaning within a lived pained experience. These narratives add meaning to the person as a stay against only having a clinical–pathological understanding of what is happening to our body and as a person. We need to understand the pathology pain while also being mindful of suffering. In this article, the theoretical and scientific approach to pain research and clinical practice intersects with the philosophical, ontological and reflective lived experience of the person living with pain. Through unique pain narratives, poetry and stories as a means of offering empathy and understanding as healing, the humanities in medicine bring into meaning another kind of therapy equal to the evidence-based medicine clinicians and researchers use to seek a cure. In this way, the medical humanities are addressing the person’s healing through the reduction of suffering and isolation by letting pain speak while others can focus in on their medical knowledge/practice and research while ‘finding’ a cure. Listening to pain opens-up to the possibility that much can be learned through multiple expressions of the pain narrative. This article provides an invitation to learn how we might articulate and listen to pain carefully and differently.

Medicine and the Art of Seeing

This Humanities in Medicine article is an examination of the use of formal fine arts training in medical curricula to enhance diagnos­tic skills. A great amount can be discerned about pathology and pathophysiology using visual cues. Conventional medical education stresses the importance of physical diagnostic skills but often omits explicit teaching on how to methodically observe for information that could be useful for diagnosis. The current curriculum could be greatly complimented by the study of fine arts, which deals directly with the careful observation, description, and interpretation of the visual world. Cet article sur la médecine et les humanités est un aperçu sur la pertinence d’incorporer une formation formelle des beaux-arts dans le curriculum médical afin d’optimiser l’habileté des cliniciens à poser un bon diagnostic. L’utilisation de repères visuels est d’une grande utilité pour discerner la pathologie et la physiopathologie de différentes maladies. L’éducation médicale conventionnelle souligne l’importance de l’examen physique lorsqu’on doit poser un diagnostic, mais néglige parfois l’enseignement d’une approche méthodique qui utilise activement l’observation afin de repérer des informations qui pourraient être très utiles dans le diagnostic d’un patient. Le curriculum actuel pourrait très bien incorporer l’étude des beaux-arts, car celle-ci implique une observation, une descrip­tion et une interprétation du monde visuel qui nous entoure.

Role Plays Used During A Humanities In Medicine Module

A medical humanities (MH) module has been conducted at KIST Medical College, Lalitpur, Nepal for the last four years. The students are divided into small groups and case scenarios, role-plays, paintings and activities are used to explore MH. The module for the fourth batch was conducted from December 2011 to March 2012. In this article the authors provide a brief overview of the MH module, Sparshanam and the learning objectives of different sessions. They provide transcripts of certain role plays conducted during the fourth, fifth and sixth sessions of the module. The role plays were conducted in Nepali with the help and guidance of the facilitators and the written transcripts in English language were provided by different student groups.