In situations of life and death or pain and suffering, it can be cathartic to put those feelings and emotions down on paper.
For doctors, it is their job to make life-and-death decisions and face the pain and suffering of their patients.
Narrative Medicine, the practice of combining health care and literature, has gained popularity in medical circles as a way for physicians to process their own feelings, clarify values and come to grips with often unconscious emotions in an emotionally volatile profession.
"Narrative medicine is about the story of the patient as well as the story of the doctor, as he or she struggles with the very challenging and yet very beautiful and rewarding career path," said Dr. Renate Rosenthal, assistant dean of Behavioral Science Integration at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
The UTHSC College of Medicine has a long tradition of a student-run "Cadaver Ceremony," in which first-year students pay homage and respect to the people who donated their bodies to be used for Anatomy Lab instruction.
For the ceremony, each Anatomy Lab group writes a narrative about their experience.
"These narratives often take the shape of a poem, story, a fantasy of who this person may have been, or an account of the challenges before a student can confidently cut into a human body," Rosenthal said. "The narratives are often very touching, creative and revealing of considerable literary talent, but they were never collected or published."
About eight years ago, a group of medical students formed a literary interest group to change that.
They called it Janus, in honor of the two-faced Roman god of transitions and beginnings, and in reference to the fact that so much of medical care deals with transitions — from health into illness, from birth to...
