Poetry and Reflection: a powerful tool for learning
This post is part of a series over the next three days on the theme of Creative Writing and Medical Humanities by Dr Eleanor Holmes (pen name Eliot North).
As a GP Tutor I’ve delivered seminars on the patient centred medicine (PCM) component of Newcastle University’s Medical Undergraduate (MBBS) course to 1st and 2nd year students, for the past three years. Professional reflective practice is taught and assessed across all five years of the curriculum.
The ability to reflect and learn from clinical encounters is central to medical education and continuing professional development. Delivered within a creative context, I believe written reflection can also be an important tool to foster wellbeing and resilience in healthcare students and professionals.
Working in an increasingly overstretched and under resourced system such as the NHS, in which clinician burnout and mental health problems are on the rise, the question of how we reflect on the difficult and complex nature of care is becoming ever more important to address.
Stating that the answer might be found outwith Medicine may seem heretical, but it is my belief that we need to look outwards to move forwards. The Arts and Humanities, like Health and Medicine, explore and reflect upon the human condition. What therefore can we learn from each other?
My last seminar with my first year group was entitled ‘Professional Reflective Practice 2.’ After a year of working together trust, an essential element of clinical reflection, had been built within the group. I used my own writing, a poem called He Blew Me a Kiss, as a launch point for discussion, which was published under my pen name Eliot North.
He Blew Me a Kiss
She liked Frank, they connected
despite his expressionless face. Behind the wound-up limbs and tremor
a gentle man shone out from the mask.
When she visited they would share a cuppa,
chat about this and that. Do the ‘medication shuffle’;
a two-step dance they both knew well.
She’d heard about stem cell research.
How they’d taken swabs from patients’ skin. Growing stem cells
from skin cells in dishes, right there in the lab up the road.
These stem cells would then become brain cells.
Models of Parkinson’s just like Frank’s. For testing newer and better
medications and perhaps one day even a cure.
The last time she saw Frank it was snowing
but he insisted on accompanying her out. Standing by the gate like a sentinel
he’d wave her off that one last time.
Later she’d think of stem cells like kisses
blown on the winter air. The moment captured in her rear-view mirror;
A hand lifted slowly, toward a frozen face.
Published by EuroStemCell ‘Tales from Within: Imaginative Non-Fiction on Stem Cells,’ 2013. (Frank is a pseudonym)
http://www.eurostemcell.org/he-blew-me-kiss-eliot-north
I have found that reading a poem aloud, that I’ve written myself, is an extremely powerful learning tool. There are obvious medical elements I can draw out regarding Parkinson’s Disease and stem cell research, but more than that the poem makes an important statement about connectedness, communication, the complex and varied role of a doctor as well as the limitations of medical science. It speaks to students about the importance of getting to know patients and continuity of care; how embracing the humanity in an encounter can be both powerful and revelatory.
The moment captured in the poem will live with me until the day I die, reading it always chokes me up; I choose to show this emotion to my students. We as clinicians who teach, whether in seminars or on the wards and in clinics, are hugely powerful role models. By stating and showing that this encounter moved me I am by example saying, “It’s OK to show emotion.” This leads to discussions about professionalism, boundaries and clinician wellbeing linked to the evidence base that demonstrates better patient outcomes when doctors show that they are emotionally affected when breaking bad news.
I wrote this poem many years after the event, it was something that sat in my brain waiting to come out. I wish that I’d been able to share it with the man who inspired the poem but he died some years before I got it down on paper. It was a EuroStemCell competition, partnered with the Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Edinburgh that spurred me to write it.
The challenge to submit an ‘imaginative non-fiction’ poem that incorporated stem cell research brought this encounter immediately to mind, the link between stem cells and Parkinson’s a way to explore how I felt about this patient. Discussing the creative process and the fact that I write under a pen name and changed the patient’s name forms a nice link to the importance of anonymity, confidentiality and consent, as well as patient and doctor voice.
With my students I then facilitated a creative guided writing exercise on a memorable clinical encounter followed by small group work, drawing and writing Haiku. The seminar culminated in poster presentations delivered by the students to the group. The results were insightful, empathetic and moving; their use of metaphor and close observation giving authenticity to the explorations they had made of encounters with patients and carers struggling to cope with dementia, a potential diagnosis of cancer and the communication difficulties witnessed for a patient with learning disabilities, linking this to issues of capacity and consent.
As someone who uses creative outlets as a way of coping with the stresses of practicing medicine, it amazes me that the word ‘creative’ can strike fear in to the hearts of medical students and healthcare professionals alike. I believe that by embracing creativity and essentially our inner child, written reflection can be much more than a required component of assessment and appraisal. All humans have the capacity to be creative, no matter how much they protest to the contrary. The skill lies in being able to coax it out of them.
Acknowledgements
All of the work I’m currently doing in this area is in collaboration with Sue Spencer with whom I wrote the guided writing framework I used above with my students, influenced by reading the books and on-line resources below. We are delivering a ‘Reflection of Clinical Encounters’ workshop using creative writing methodologies in November 2016 for the Staff Development Programme, School of Medical Education, Newcastle University.
Writing Poems by Peter Sansom, Bloodaxe 1994
The Poetry Toolkit – The Poetry Trust 2010, available as a free PDF download http://www.thepoetrytrust.org/images/uploads/pdfs/Toolkit%20for%20Teachers.pdf
Related reading
S E Gull, R O’Flynn, J Y L Hunter. Creative writing workshops for medical education: learning from a pilot study with hospital staff. Med Humanities 2002;28:2 102–104
, Teaching reflective competence in medical education using paintings. Med Humanities 2011;37:1 58–59
, J C McLachlan. Evaluating a poetry workshop in medical education. Med Humanities 2006;32:1 59–64