Johanna Shapiro, PhD
One of the central issues in medical education is how to respond to the suffering of others. Idealistic medical students think they will always respond with an altruistic approach impulse, in which they will naturally draw closer to the suffering other, feel empathy toward this other, and be moved to put the interests of the other above their own interests. Yet they may find that, more often than not, they exhibit an opposite, but equally strong, impulse to detach and separate from the contamination of others’ suffering.
Professional Writings
Whither (Whether) Medical Humanities? The Future of Humanities and Arts in Medical Education
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
This special issue of Journal for Learning through the Arts focuses on the uses of literature and arts in medical education. The introductory article addresses current debate in the field of medical humanities (MH), namely the existential question of what is the purpose of integrating humanities/arts in medical education; and then examines how the submissions included in the issue illuminate this conversation.
Humanizing and Othering in Medical Practice
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
As editor the Medical Humanities section, Shapiro provides an introduction and discusses how the articles in this section of the journal use reflective writing in medical education contexts to explore the perspectives and priorities of a range of others – patients, family members, other health care professionals – involved in the clinical encounter.
Country Doctors in Literature: Helping Medical Students Understand What Rural Practice is All About
Johanna Shapiro, PhD, and Randall Longenecker, MD
Rural family medicine residencies and practices continue to have difficulty attracting applicants and practitioners. Students facing decisions about rural training or practice may be deterred by negative stereotypes or a lack of understanding about rural experience. Renewed efforts to foster students’
interest and influence students’ intent toward rural practice are sorely needed.
All the World’s a Stage: The Use of Theatrical Performance in Medical Education
Johanna Shapiro & Lynn Hunt
Student exposure to illness-related theatrical performances holds intriguing educational possibilities. This project explored uses of theatrical performance within the context of medical education.
Words and Wards: A Model of Reflective Writing and Its Uses in Medical Education
Johanna Shapiro · Deborah Kasman · Audrey Shafer
Personal, creative writing as a process for reflection on patient care and socialization into medicine (“reflective writing”) has important potential uses in educating medical students and residents. Based on the authors’ experiences with a range of writing activities in academic medical settings, this article sets forth a conceptual model for considering the processes and effects of such writing.
Medical Students Learn to Tell Stories about Their Patients and Themselves
Johanna Shapiro, PhD, Elena Bezzubova, MD, PhD, and Ronald Koons, MD
A small group of third-year medical students and interdisciplinary faculty sit around a table. The students look weary—stethoscopes slung around their necks, white coats slightly rumpled, pockets overflowing with smartphones, pens, scraps of paper, a half-eaten candy bar. They are not sure what to expect, but they are glad to sit down.
Movies Help Us Explore Relational Issues in Healthcare
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
Many medical scholars have noted the potential of movies to address broad philosophical and ethical questions pertinent to the practice of medicine. For example, Banos argues that movies are a better way to teach about the patient-clinician relationship than arc didactic presentations. Yamada, Maskarinec, and Greene note that movies provide a forum for helping learners understand that illness has a moral trajectory as well as a medical course; and to help students in medicine, nursing. and related health professions to see themselves as moral actors.
The Least of These: Reading Poetry to Encourage Reflection on the Care of Vulnerable Patients
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
How do we encourage medical students, residents, and physicians to reflect critically and empathically on the plight of vulnerable patients? Exposure alone may not be sufficient, as some evidence suggests that contact with such patients leads to more negative attitudes in trainees.1 A series of 16-line poems2 (11 total, 3 quoted below) by physician-poet Rafael Campo offers provocative material that can easily be integrated in discussions of both novice learners’ and experienced doctors’ clinical interactions with the under-served and other vulnerable groups.
Minding the Gap(s): Narrativity and LiminaIity In Medical Student Writing
Therese Jones, Felicia Cohn, and Johanna Shapiro
With the publication of The Wounded Storyteller, sociologist Arthur Frank made a major contribution to conceptualizing and classifying patient pathographies or stories of illness. The categories of illness narratives that he identified-restitution, chaos, quest, testimony are now widely applied as interpretive frameworks for the patient experience of illness. Elsewhere Cohn and Shapiro, et al., argue that, at the deepest level, Frank’s categories are relevant to the human condition, to those narratives that emerge from suffering, powerlessness, and loss of control.” Because medical students experience traumatic and transformative events in the course of their training, the stories they construct can also be understood and organized through similar conceptual categories.”