"Writing is Good Medicine"™ Selected for National Conference

Writing is Good Medicine™, an expressive writing program for patients, will be presented by Celia Engel Bandman at The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine, a national conference which will focus on the links between the science of medicine and the art of writing.  The conference is being co-sponsored by the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and the University of Iowa Press on April 24-25, 2007 in Iowa City.

Ms. Bandman created Writing is Good Medicine ™ not to teach the elements of writing but to help patients explore his or her experience in the lived world of illness.  The writing program emerged from her work as a staff medical humanist at a regional cancer center in Vermont (2002-2205), in which she documented the patient’s perspective—in their own words—for inclusion in the medical record.

The conference provides medical educators and practitioners an opportunity to look at the role of creative writing in patient care.  Ms. Bandman and co-presenter Emily Ferrara will offer a program entitled Writing is Good Medicine and The Alchemy of Grief: Catalysts for Meaning In Illness.  The workshop will present two models, which demonstrate writing as a tool for healing illness and trauma on physical, psychological and spiritual levels.

Emily Ferrara, MA, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School is a poet and writer committed to weaving the humanities into the fabric of medical education.  Celia Engel Bandman, a founder of the Center for Communication In Medicine®, writer and medical humanist, develops programs to educate patients, families and the medical practitioners who care for them about the key role of communication in making informed healthcare decisions and improving quality of care.  For more information about the Center’s programs visit: www.communicationinmedcine.org or call 802. 442. 5800