A spate of recent arts/medicine convergences have caught my attention, and has me thinking about the potential of ARTStem collaborations between our arts institution and the medical research and healthcare sectors of Winston-Salem.

Here’s a short article out of Drexel University about a current exhibit of artistic work once used in medical education. The Smart Set: A Model Body.

Here’s a news story about the exhibit:

And there was this item from the Chronicle of Higher Education about “narrative medicine,” an approach that aligns training in narrative with training in medical diagnosis. From the story: ” . . . Lately, however, I’ve become interested in the field of narrative medicine, which takes a more sympathetic view of doctors. The idea here is that studying narrative—training doctors to read literature, to become more compassionate listeners and interpreters of the stories their patients tell—can make doctors better at what they do. To develop “narrative competence,” doctors are encouraged to undertake self-reflective writing exercises to help them process the emotional residue left by confrontations with illness, pain, and death. As the parent of a child who needs medical attention, I’m attracted to the idea that my training as a literary critic might help doctors more capably realize the ideals of their own profession. . . . ” More: http://chronicle.com/article/Narratives-Medicine/126560/