Literature & Medicine

Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care® is a national award-winning, hospital-based, scholar-led humanities reading and discussion program for health care professionals.

Literature & Medicine encourages participants to connect the worlds of medicine and lived experience, giving them the opportunity to reflect on their professional roles and relationships through plays, short stories, poetry, fiction and personal narratives in a setting where they can share their reflections with colleagues. It has a significant effect on the way participants understand their work, and their relationships with patients and with each other. It is also an innovative and cost-effective way to improve patient care, as observed by a hospital administrator: “The reflection and conversation that takes place in the process greatly enhances the level of cooperation, collaboration and esprit de corps within our hospital family and our community at large. This impetus in turn greatly improves the quality of care we provide to our patients and their families.”

Since 1997, Literature & Medicine, a program created by the Maine Humanities Council and offered in partnership with other state humanities councils, has reached health care personnel in 28 states, providing them with facilitated reading and discussion groups that allow them to recognize and address the challenges they routinely face as health care providers. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Council for the Humanities and 12 other state and territorial humanities councils are now partnering in this effort to work with groups of health care professionals in VA health care facilities.

If your VA health care facility is interested in hosting Literature & Medicine, please contact Program Officer Anna Links at 212.233.1131x28 or by email.