Medical Humanities has played an important role in my personal development as a physician and palliative medicine doctor. Reading stories, novels, poetry, listening to music, looking at art and movies and plays have helped teach me
- how to face suffering,
- how to sit with it,
- how to be curious about and wonder what will emerge if I stay long enough.
Two years ago, the humanities and spirituality SIG at AAHPM launched a book club – with Drew Dipin Faust’s The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. This year, we followed with A. Verghese’s first novel, Cutting for Stone.
At the Academy meeting in Vancouver, we solicited proposals for next year’s book from people who attended the bookclub discussion. Instead of keeping the voting and selection to an insular group, we tapping into the emerging culture of “open access” and social media by opening the voting to the community at large – http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2012_BookClub
To allow everyone time to read the book, we are selecting it early this year. The deadline for voting is coming up quickly. Please vote for your top 3 choices! While we will select the most voted for book for the Annual Assembly, the next most popular books will serve as topics for discussion for each season of the year.
Thanks for participating!
Suzana Makowski – Co-Chair: Humanities and Spirituality SIG