UAMS’ journal place for creativity

In a recent publication by Arkansas doctors, researchers and medical students, haikus address a hospital software system and in illustrations, a heart grows from a tree branch and an elderly man’s room has a door overlooking his own past.

The flights of whimsy are part of “Medicine and Meaning,” a new online journal that shows off the creativity of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences scientists, faculty members and students.

The project grew out of campus surveys dealing with burnout — an oft-cited scourge of health professions — and aims to help doctors and their students rediscover meaning in the hectic day-to-day life, said editor-in-chief Dr. Erick Messias.

“How do we find meaning at work? One of the answers to that is [a] creative outlet,” the psychiatry professor said. “Storytelling is an important way for people to make sense out of the world, to make sense of being in the universe.”

Inspired by similar com

pilations such as one from Columbia University’s medical school, the journal is the first of its kind at the Arkansas health center. It includes poems, stories and art pieces, many of which touch on health care.

Messias said the concept borrows from a discipline called narrative medicine, which incorporates storytelling — including literature — to process difficult experiences and themes such as being sick or taking care of the ill and injured.

“We mix all that up, and then allow people to use whatever forms they feel most comfortable with” to explore it, he said.

While there is no set publication schedule, Messias said he was surprised by interest in the journal and the quality of submissions. More than 40 students responded to an early inquiry about it, and the first issue was posted last month: medicineandmeaning.uams.edu.

Third-year medical student Griffin Sonaty, who serves as chief student editor of the journal’s poetry section, said historically there haven’t been many opportunities to incorporate the humanities in medicine.

But in his time as a student, he’s noticed the different ways doctors interact with their patients. A key skill for physicians is learning how people think, feel and tell stories, and projects like the journal can hone those abilities, he said.

“If doctors or medical students can learn to be more reflective about what they’re doing — be more human in what they’re doing — they’ll be able to take care of people better,” he said.

He added that the journal is a good resource to have at a public university that enrolls students from backgrounds where they may not have had a chance to take part in traditional liberal-arts activities.

Messias, like Sonaty, hopes that the project will help physicians and their students hone their craft, citing physicist Albert Einstein, who argued that imagination can be more important than intelligence.

“When you read a piece of poetry, you all of a sudden realize a perspective you didn’t have before,” Messias said. “[A UAMS] surgeon told me, ‘This is going to help us become not only better physicians, but better people.”

A BURNOUT BUSTER?

Finding ways to mitigate burnout has been a hot topic in the health care sector in recent years, appearing as discussion topics at conferences and in writings by professional groups.

More than 43% of doctors who responded to a 2017 survey reported at least one symptom of burnout, according to research by the American Medical Association, the Mayo Clinic and the Stanford University School of Medicine.

While that figure may overstate the problem, more doctors definitely have feelings such as exhaustion, cynicism, depersonalization and a perceived poor quality of care, said Dr. Stephen Keithahn, chief wellness officer at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

That’s likely because health professionals are managing more work, including clerical demands, with fewer resources; having less face-toface interaction with patients; and seeing sicker patients in their practices.

“I think there’s a sense that physicians are sort of like astronauts, with the ‘right stuff,’ so they’re not supposed to show weakness,” but that’s not always true, said Keithahn.

It’s become an issue for health institutions and systems, which recognize that burned-out doctors and staff are both expensive to replace and don’t provide the best patient care.

As a result, institutions are experimenting with different ways to deal with burnout, and Keithahn said those include some programs that have looked at incorporating the humanities as a strategy to help out medical students.

In his view, projects like the journal could be less helpful for longtime professionals, who may not be able to get into the state of mind to engage with the activity, but as a preventive or reminder of a sense of purpose it could be useful.

Other helpful approaches include streamlining processes to make tools and technology doctors find frustrating — like glitchy electronic medical record systems — easier to use and less of a main focus, he added.

“Reestablishing the humanism of medicine is, I think, an overall sort of global goal,” he said.