The following list provides information on elective courses and educational programs connected to the Medical Humanities on offer at UCSF. Please check with the course instructor and official UCSF

Winter 2008 Elective Courses

Don't Kill the Messenger! Physicians and the Lay Audience
170.02 (1 unit)
Contact: Akhil Mehra, MD, MPhil
Tuesdays, 5:00-7:00pm
Parnassus Room U-456
More course info here

This course will examine the issue of translating medicine to the lay public, whether through clinical work, interpersonal interactions with non-medical colleagues, or through writing about medicine.  The target audience is medical students with clinical experience, although pre-clinical students and interested non-medical students are invited to participate as well.  We'll be looking at popular works of medical literature directed to the public by physician authors such as Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman, narratives of the medical school and residency experience, the history of "medical public relations", and what science shows us about communicating to patients at large.  On the public side, we'll examine depictions of medicine in movies and popular television (such as "House", "Gray's Anatomy", and "ER" ), discuss patient self education in the post-Google world, and examine the application of  the "customer service" model to providing medical services.   Readings will be kept enjoyable and achievable for a medical student audience, and the class format is group discussion.

Older Adults and End of Life Care: Empowering Through Stories
170.30 (1 unit)
Student contacts: Tess Lang and Arul Thangavel
Select Tuesdays beginning 1/15/08 at 12 Noon in S -176 and 3 clinical sessions to be scheduled at students’ convenience.

The effectiveness and pleasure of clinical practice are enhanced when providers have the skills to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by their patient’s stories. What is it like to grow old? To be ill or disabled? To know death is near? In this course, students will learn interviewing techniques (both medical and anthropological), visit an older patient in the home and/or hospital, elicit a narrative, write it up, discuss it with the patient and classmates, then work as a group to make a compilation of personal and illness narratives. In the process, students will read exerpts from seminal illness narratives, improve their writing skills, learn strategies for approaching discussion of end of life and quality of life issues with patients, and become familiar with simple tools for assessing the health and well-being of older patients.

Narrative Medicine: The Medical Student as Writer
170.31 (1 unit)
Student contact: Mellody Hayes
Alternate Thursdays from  5-7 PM beginning 1/17/08 in N417

The goal of this creative writing workshop will be to help students develop skills as writers of fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction. While many may choose to write about their training experiences, there are no subject matter restrictions. The primary goals are to improve as writers and to move from ideas toward finished essays and stories. Students will read and workshop each other’s work, read established writers focusing on craft and technique, and do in-class writing exercises to help generate new writing. Previous writing experience not required. 

The course will be co-taught by Bill Hayes, author of The Anatomist, Five Quarts, and Sleep Demons and Louise Aronson, MD MFA, UCSF medicine faculty member whose short fiction has won national literary awards.