Poetry In Medicine

Infused with hope, heartbreak, and humor, this book gathers our greatest poets from antiquity to the present, prescribing new perspectives on doctors and patients, remedies and procedures, illness and recovery. A literary elixir, Poetry in Medicine displays the genre's capacity to heal us.

This book explores previously unexamined overlaps between the poetic imagination and the medical mind. It shows how appreciation of poetry can help us to engage with medicine in more intense ways based on ‘de-familiarising’ old habits and bringing poetic forms of ‘close reading’ to the clinic. Bleakley and Neilson carry out an extensive critical examination of the well-established practices of narrative medicine to show that non-narrative, lyrical poetry does different kind of work, previously unexamined, such as place eclipsing time. They articulate a groundbreaking ‘lyrical medicine’ that promotes aesthetic, ethical and political practices as well as noting the often-concealed metaphor cache of biomedicine. Demonstrating that ambiguity is a key resource in both poetry and medicine, the authors anatomise poetic and medical practices as forms of extended and situated cognition, grounded in close readings of singular contexts. They illustrate structural correspondences between poetic diction and clinical thinking, such as use of sound and metaphor. This provocative examination of the meaningful overlap between poetic and clinical work is an essential read for researchers and practitioners interested in extending the reach of medical and health humanities, narrative medicine, medical education and English literature.

This is a practical and comprehensive guide to communication in family medicine for doctors nurses and staff in the primary healthcare team. It brings together all facets of communication in healthcare including involvement of patients staff and external workers. It shows how to address all aspects of communication in relation to one-to-one situations teaching and groups and encourages the reader to reflect on their own clinical and work experience. Using think boxes exercises and references this is an accessible guide relevant to all members of the practice team.

Medical school is a wild ride. You're asked to do things you would rather not do. You say things you wish you'd never said. But you also grow. And make mistakes. And learn from your mistakes. Then you grow even more. Somewhere along the way, in the chaos of it all, you transition from being a redundant, observing appendage, to a useful, contributing member of society. You become a doctor. But you can also lose part of yourself. Your empathy. Compassion. Ability to love. In 'Humanity Emergency, ' Dr. Sarah Fraser has published a collection of poetry she wrote as a medical student. The poems speak to the 'emergency' for more humanity in medicine, and in the world more generally. The time is now. The person is you. It is an emergency. Go.

In this fascinating book, Johanna Emeney examines the global proliferation of new poetry related to illness and medical treatment from the perspective of doctors, patients, and carers in light of the growing popularity of the medical humanities. She provides a close analysis of poetry from New Zealand, the USA, and the UK that deals with sociological and philosophical aspects of sickness, ailment, medical treatment, care, and recuperation.

A Body of Work includes poems by writers from the dawn of Enlightenment to the 21st Century and explores changing attitudes to medicine, health and the body. The book is divided into eight thematic sections, each of which includes a chronological range of poetry and excerpts of important historical and contextual medical writing. The sections are: • Body as machine • Nerves, mind, and brain • Consuming • Illness, disease, and disability • Hospitals, practitioners, and professionals • Treatment • Sex, evolution, and reproduction • Ageing and dying A Body of Work is supported by a companion website offering further contextual essays, class discussion questions and visual material. Includes work by such poets as: Dannie Abse, Maya Angelou, Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, John Burnside, Raymond Carver, Lucille Clifton, S. T. Coleridge, Erasmus Darwin, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Mark Doty, T.S. Eliot, Paul Farley, Ann Finch, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Graves, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ted Hughes, Rudyard Kipling, Philip Larkin, Robert Lowell, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Paul Muldoon, Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath, Rainer Maria Rilke, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Jo Shapcott, John Addington Symonds, Michael Symmons Roberts, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams.

The poems contained in this volume are conversations we could easily overlook in our rush to provide care. Through poetry, I explore what it really means to be sick, and what it means to be a provider, or a caregiver. These poems are for people who have ever been unwell, and for those who have never been sick; for people who love poetry, and for those who wonder and doubt; for people who think the healthcare system is fatally flawed, and for those who serve in the system with dedication and love. The book is for learners of the healthcare professions, just as much as it is for teachers and practitioners. These poems are for you...