Literature and Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care™ is an exciting new workplace program that will give people involved in the delivery of health care an opportunity to come together and reflect on their roles as health care providers through the medium of literature.

Participants attend a series of six monthly discussions, held at the host hospital and facilitated by a scholar, in which they explore works of fiction, poetry, drama and nonfiction that illuminate issues central to caring for people, whether they are well, sick or dying. These programs offer doctors, nurses, community health workers, policy makers, hospital trustees, and allied staff an opportunity to reflect on the complex nature of their daily work and their responsibilities to their patients and their colleagues.

The program was developed by the Maine Humanities Council and has been offered, with great success, in over 20 hospitals in that state. The impact has been significant.

Health care professionals have explored the human dimensions of their work, questioned the assumptions they bring to it, and developed connections between the scientific language of medicine and disease and the day-to-day realities of their patients' lived experiences. Participants report that the seminars have expanded their understanding of the needs and concerns of their patients and of their co-workers. The program has benefited its host institutions by giving diverse groups of health care professionals an opportunity to interact away from the often-frantic pace of work, thereby enriching working relationships and strengthening their sense of common purpose. Additional information on the program, including syllabi for the Massachusetts sites, can be found by clicking on each hospital below.

Hospitals participating in 2008

Lahey Clinic in Burlington
Massachusetts General Boston
UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester

Hospitals participating in 2007

Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge
Lahey Clinic in Burlington
Massachusetts General Boston
UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester

Hospitals participating in 2006

Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge
Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain
Lahey Clinic in Burlington
UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester

Hospitals participating in 2005

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston
Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain
Lahey Clinic in Burlington
UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester

Hospitals participating in 2004

Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield
Lahey Clinic in Burlington
UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester
Children's Hospital in Boston
Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain.

Hospitals that participated in 2003

Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield
UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester
Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton
Children's Hospital in Boston
Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain.

For further information on plans to offer the program in Massachusetts, or to explore the possibility of bringing the program to your hospital, please contact Kristin O'Connell at the Northampton office of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities: (413) 584-8440, or koconnell@mfh.org.

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Literature & Medicine at Year 5: MFH Plans Program Expansion