Writing Workshops at Work? The 55-Word Stories
Who would expect I'd be encouraged to write poetry at work?
One of the medical providers at work is teaching a "Humanities in Medicine" seminar series. She invited any and all staff at the Health Center to attend a writing workshop recently, as part of the series. I sat in, with about 8 other people.
This writing workshop, "55 Word Stories," is an activity that a number of medical schools and medical professionals are using to help understand and work out the challenges of providing care to patients.
The concept was recently published by Colleen Fogarty in the journal Family Medicine. ("Fifty-five Word Stories: 'Small Jewels' for Personal Reflection and Teaching", Fam Med 2010;42(6):400-2.)
Here's the abstract from the article:
Fifty-five word stories are brief pieces of creative writing that use elements of poetry, prose, or both to encapsulate key experiences in health care. These stories have appeared in Family Medicine and JAMA and have been used to teach family medicine faculty development fellows. Writers and readers of 55-word stories gain insight into key moments of the healing arts; the brevity of the pieces adds to both the writing and reading impact. Fifty-five word stories may be used with trainees to stimulate personal reflection on key training experiences or may be used by individual practitioners as a tool for professional growth.
The key concepts: use exactly 55 words to briefly describe one story from your job. Contractions count as one word. The title does not contribute to the word count. All the usual requirements of a story apply: describe the setting; provide a conflict or challenge; end with a resolution.
Do this in 15 minutes.
We then read the results around the table. Some were quite good, and a few people stated they enjoyed the challenge of the exercise. I suspect one or two will go on to write more of these pieces.
I may try this again; it's an interesting form.
Here's mine, with explanation of technical terms at bottom:
***********************
Connection
I never meet our patients…
…just paper: MRN, DOB, Dx, CD4, VL
and checkboxes on a list of services
but names I remember - old friends over years
of data entry
so when I keyed in that cell count
(fewer cells than years you’d lived)
I stopped
Told myself:
breathe
breathe
breathe
hit SAVE
And grieved
*************************
terms used: (all are commonly-used acronyms in medical practice)
MRN: medical record number
DOB: date of birth
Dx: Diagnosis
CD4: Count of the number of CD4 white cells in a measure of blood; normal is around 1400; low counts are indicative of HIV infection; anything below 200 is a diagnosis of AIDS and is usually the point at which patients are started on anti-retroviral medications.
VL: viral load: the amount of virus in a measure of blood. Normal is "undectable", which in lab terms is anything below a count of 75. Some of our patients have viral loads so high that we can't reliably estimate, except that it's beyond 160,000.
One of the medical providers at work is teaching a "Humanities in Medicine" seminar series. She invited any and all staff at the Health Center to attend a writing workshop recently, as part of the series. I sat in, with about 8 other people.
This writing workshop, "55 Word Stories," is an activity that a number of medical schools and medical professionals are using to help understand and work out the challenges of providing care to patients.
The concept was recently published by Colleen Fogarty in the journal Family Medicine. ("Fifty-five Word Stories: 'Small Jewels' for Personal Reflection and Teaching", Fam Med 2010;42(6):400-2.)
Here's the abstract from the article:
Fifty-five word stories are brief pieces of creative writing that use elements of poetry, prose, or both to encapsulate key experiences in health care. These stories have appeared in Family Medicine and JAMA and have been used to teach family medicine faculty development fellows. Writers and readers of 55-word stories gain insight into key moments of the healing arts; the brevity of the pieces adds to both the writing and reading impact. Fifty-five word stories may be used with trainees to stimulate personal reflection on key training experiences or may be used by individual practitioners as a tool for professional growth.
The key concepts: use exactly 55 words to briefly describe one story from your job. Contractions count as one word. The title does not contribute to the word count. All the usual requirements of a story apply: describe the setting; provide a conflict or challenge; end with a resolution.
Do this in 15 minutes.
We then read the results around the table. Some were quite good, and a few people stated they enjoyed the challenge of the exercise. I suspect one or two will go on to write more of these pieces.
I may try this again; it's an interesting form.
Here's mine, with explanation of technical terms at bottom:
***********************
Connection
I never meet our patients…
…just paper: MRN, DOB, Dx, CD4, VL
and checkboxes on a list of services
but names I remember - old friends over years
of data entry
so when I keyed in that cell count
(fewer cells than years you’d lived)
I stopped
Told myself:
breathe
breathe
breathe
hit SAVE
And grieved
*************************
terms used: (all are commonly-used acronyms in medical practice)
MRN: medical record number
DOB: date of birth
Dx: Diagnosis
CD4: Count of the number of CD4 white cells in a measure of blood; normal is around 1400; low counts are indicative of HIV infection; anything below 200 is a diagnosis of AIDS and is usually the point at which patients are started on anti-retroviral medications.
VL: viral load: the amount of virus in a measure of blood. Normal is "undectable", which in lab terms is anything below a count of 75. Some of our patients have viral loads so high that we can't reliably estimate, except that it's beyond 160,000.