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Building character: A creative writing intervention to encourage clinician reflection on the social determinants of health

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Abstract

Research into the power of literature to enhance empathy supports the inclusion of reflective reading and writing in medical humanities programmes around the world. Building on additional research into perspective-taking, investigators piloted an intervention using guided fiction writing to focus participant attention on risky health behaviours and the social determinants of health. A mix of clinical and nonclinical participants at a medical humanities workshop were asked to develop a fictional character engaging in a negative health behaviour and write about that individual in two prescribed scenes. The exercises were found to be valuable and feasible by participants and highlighted themes in effective practice, including cultural competence. Analysis of the participants’ writing and the session transcript indicated increases in awareness of the social and economic determinants of health and suggested that examining modifiable risk behaviours in non-clinical settings through fiction writing may be an important tool in enhancing provider empathy.
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© 2015 Intellect Ltd Miscellaneous. English language. doi: 10.1386/jaah.6.3.247_1
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health humanities
social determinants
health behaviours
creative writing
health behaviours
socio-economic status
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Research into the power of literature to enhance empathy supports the inclusion
of reflective reading and writing in medical humanities programmes around the
world. Building on additional research into perspective-taking, investigators piloted
an intervention using guided fiction writing to focus participant attention on risky
health behaviours and the social determinants of health. A mix of clinical and non-
clinical participants at a medical humanities workshop were asked to develop a
fictional character engaging in a negative health behaviour and write about that
individual in two prescribed scenes. The exercises were found to be valuable and
feasible by participants and highlighted themes in effective practice, including
cultural competence. Analysis of the participants’ writing and the session transcript
JAAH_6.3_Saffran_247-255.indd 247 3/15/16 9:06:03 AM
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indicated increases in awareness of the social and economic determinants of health
and suggested that examining modifiable risk behaviours in non-clinical settings
through fiction writing may be an important tool in enhancing provider empathy.
inTroducTion
The 2008 World Health Organization Report, Closing the Gap in a Generation,
accelerated the shift worldwide towards adapting health systems to address
social and economic determinants of health (Commission on Social
Determinants of Health 2008). In the United States, where non-communicable
diseases make up an estimated 50 per cent of premature morbidity and mortal-
ity, evidence persists of a strong social and economic gradient (Chokshi 2010),
even among conditions with behavioural risk factors, such as obesity and lung
disease (Bodenheimer et al. 2009). Access to care and the quality of care are
unequally distributed as well, particularly as it concerns under-represented
minorities (Institute of Medicine 2002). Current guidelines in medical education
reflect the need for physicians to incorporate social determinants and popula-
tion health knowledge into practice, particularly in light of growing emphasis
on preventive interventions (Bodenheimer et al. 2009). Yet, even as curricula
change, the National Research Council (2004: 16) notes that ‘Although the
scientific evidence linking biological, behavioural, psychological, and social
variables to health, illness, and disease is impressive, the translation and incor-
poration of this knowledge into standard medical practice appear to have been
less than successful’.
Medical humanities programmes that focus provider empathy on non-
clinical settings may offer a valuable alternative when ‘traditional educa-
tional frameworks are not well-suited to demonstrate the mechanisms by
which living conditions cause disease’ (Institute of Medicine 2002: S182).
For instance, literary fiction may provide an opportunity to educate provid-
ers about the worlds of their patients. Reading fiction has been shown to
disrupt stereotypes and assumptions (Kidd and Castano 2013) and solicit an
empathetic response towards ‘individuals whose inner lives are rarely easily
discerned but warrant exploration’ (Kidd and Castano 2013: 378). The crea-
tion of original work may further offer the potential to move students ‘from
reflection towards transformation’ (Kumagai 2012: 1142).
Creative writing interventions have been widely employed to promote
self-reflection among providers and humane care-giving (Reisman et al. 2006;
Hatem and Ferrara 2001). In medical humanities programmes, writing is most
often focused on exploring experiences of care-giving and in making sense of
and challenging assumptions through narrative (DasGupta and Charon 2004)
or on improving listening and communications skills among providers (Pallai
and Armijo 2013). Research into perspective-taking (Blatt et al. 2010) combined
with studies tying exposure to literary texts with enhanced empathy, in particu-
lar those that ‘engage their readers creatively as writers’ (Kidd and Castano
2013: 377), suggests that fiction writing may offer a unique strategy for promot-
ing reflection on the social determinants of health.
seTTing and parTicipanTs
The one-hour Building Character workshop was open to the participants of
the Examined Life Conference held annually at the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver
College of Medicine at the University of Iowa. The conference encourages
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health care professionals, medical educators, patients and their family members
to incorporate humanities and writing into all aspects of health and patient care.
Fifteen participants attended the workshop and constituted our convenience
sample for analysis. They included six physicians, two nurses, one midwife, a
biomedical researcher, a medical librarian, a writer, an undergraduate and two
who did not identify a category. The majority (approximately two-thirds) of
participants were female, and participants ranged in age from university-aged
to mid-50s. The majority of participants appeared to be European American,
although participants were not asked to record their race or ethnicity. All fifteen
participants voluntarily submitted their worksheets with no identifiers other
than professional category to protect participants’ confidentiality and support
an open and unrestricted creative process. The project was approved by the
Health Sciences Institutional Review Board at the University of Missouri.
ModeraTors
The workshop was moderated by Lise Saffran and Michelle Teti, who together
have expertise in fiction writing, narratives and public health, and qualitative
analysis.
prograMMe descripTion
In this innovation we explored whether fiction-writing prompts that placed
characters who had engaged in unsympathetic health behaviours in non-
clinical settings would help participants develop a more concrete aware-
ness of how living conditions influence health behaviour. Secondarily,
we explored the acceptance and feasibility of guided fiction writing with
providers.
The workshop began with the discussion question How is health affected
by the circumstances in which a person lives and works? Responses constituted a
baseline from which to gauge general familiarity with the concepts of health-
related behaviour and social determinants of health. Following a short clari-
fication about what is meant by ‘health-related behaviour’, participants were
asked to think of a health-related behaviour for which it was difficult to gener-
ate empathy (i.e. smoking while pregnant).
Participants were asked to take a mental snapshot of an imaginary indi-
vidual engaging in the chosen health behaviour. This individual was to consti-
tute their ‘character’ for the rest of the session. Participants then recorded
demographic data about their character, including age, race, and other
socio-economic factors. See Table 1 for examples of unsympathetic health
Health behaviours Socio-economic status
Smoking while pregnant Eleven of fifteen had a high school education or below
Taking quick result diet pills Eight of fifteen were described as working poor or poor
Having Cheetos and soda for breakfast Four described as middle class
Female circumcision One (character who refused to vaccinate) described as
upper-middle class
Risky driving Fourteen of the fifteen characters described as Caucasian;
one as Hispanic
Table 1: Examples of written work.
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behaviours that participants chose for their characters, along with demo-
graphic indicators chosen to correspond with those characters.
Following a brief explanation of ‘round’ characters in literature, partici-
pants were given writing prompts that encouraged them to imagine their
character’s inner life. These prompts included questions about their charac-
ter’s childhood memories, as well as prompts that encouraged participants
to reach beyond stereotypes that might be associated with their character,
such as asking them to complete the sentence ‘No one might ever guess that
[character] can […]’.
A brief explanation of the term ‘scene’ in creative writing and tips for
creating scenes was followed by the prompt to write a scene in which the
character was on his or her way to work. A second scene involved the char-
acter engaged in a difficult task (cooking a meal, fixing a car) with another
person, in which something goes wrong. In a final instruction, participants
were asked to make the character ‘as smart as you are’, which was designed
to discourage reductive explanations of behaviour. Each phase was followed
by a moderated discussion. See Table 2 for themes that emerged during the
discussions following each phase of the exercise.
resuLTs
Data from the workshop included a recording of the session and participant
worksheets on which they recorded the behaviour, demographic characteris-
tics of the character and scenes involving their fictional character. Our anal-
ysis was exploratory in nature and included reviewing a transcribed record
of the workshop session and participant worksheets to identify key themes
in the data. All of the authors reviewed the data multiple times to become
familiar with overall concepts and patterns in the transcripts and worksheets.
We created a codebook that contained the most salient themes related to
our research questions about empathy, feasibility and social determinants of
health (including economic and cultural factors). A new theme emerged during
analysis: importance of imaginative work. Importance of imaginative work relates
to participants’ recognition of imagination as a tool in understanding health-
related behaviour.
We coded the data with the codebook, matching text to themes, and
wrote memos to compare and contrast codes and ideas throughout the analy-
sis. We noted which data followed the intervention phases and which data
were baseline comments. Then we printed out a code report and used that
to construct the text and examples in the results section based on grounded
theory (Charmaz 2006). We used qualitative methods of theme analysis that
were neither novel nor created for this project in particular. The trustworthi-
ness and quality of our analysis was maintained by meeting to discuss data
codes and resolve discrepancies, by using triangulation methods – two forms
of data, group transcripts and worksheets – to corroborate ideas, and by clearly
outlining our methods and procedures.
Most of the providers’ comments regarding social determinants before
intervention focused on clinical encounters, such as hospital admissions.
This is unsurprising, given that for the baseline discussion participants were
asked to draw on their own experience of observed behaviour, as opposed
to the later phases, which asked them to imagine patients’ life circum-
stances in non-clinical settings. A few pre-intervention comments implied
a baseline lack of familiarity with the concept of health behaviour and/or
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social determinants of health (i.e. identifying fame and/or affluence as a
general determinant of substandard care). In writing their scenes, however,
participants often did include determinants such as social support, which is
described from a fictional character’s point of view in the following excerpt:
‘With the children, a single mom only had so much control over time.
Already tense, anticipating the demeaning tone of her boss, the sight of
grandma’s driveway brought a wave of relief, of strength’.
In neither of the two scenes were participants asked to write about the
health behaviour itself, and yet, alongside increased empathy with the charac-
ter, many participants also directly linked health behaviour to the circumstances
in which the character lived, worked or played. A character whose problematic
behaviour was identified as ‘eating Cheetos [cheese-flavoured snacks] and
orange soda for breakfast’ was later portrayed in a scene in which he was
rushing to complete shift work for which he had been working overtime
because of financial difficulties. In at least a few instances, the fiction writing
exercises prompted participants to reflect on past experiences interacting with
diverse populations in health care settings.
For example, the comment included in Table 2 under the Cultural compe-
tence theme was made by a man in late middle-age who appeared to be
Caucasian. In response to the instruction to ‘make the character at least as
smart as you are’ he shared a memory of encountering an individual whom he
identified both as a ‘working man’ and as a ‘Hispanic’ in a pharmacy setting
and noted ‘the problem that we interpret as not being that smart is that people
are not speaking the same language’. In the discussion, he went further to
clarify that the language to which he referred was not the English language so
much as an issue of health literacy, noting ‘[his] English was perfect but he
just couldn’t get the instructions to his medicine’.
Participant comments also addressed the value of fiction writing as a tool
for developing insight into health behaviour (categorized as the importance of
imaginative works). At each phase of the intervention, participants commented
on the feasibility of the exercise. Some focused on the writing task itself and
others pointed to the specific difficulty of empathizing with someone in differ-
ent circumstances. The direction to participants, given along with the scene-
writing prompts, to ‘make the character you are writing about at least as smart
Discussion themes Participant responses
Effect of social determinants
on health behaviour
‘So people who don’t have the resources to get their kids to the clinic
visits; that would be a huge stress’.
Value of imaginative work
in understanding health
behaviour
‘I think that choosing a behaviour we don’t understand forces us to feel
sympathy for the character, and as we develop the story we understand
more why the character does what he does’.
Cultural competence ‘He just couldn’t get the instructions to his medicine […] the problem
that we interpret as not being that smart is that people are not speaking
the same language. That’s the biggest thing in medicine; people just do
not speak our language’.
Feasibility of exercise ‘I found it interesting that once you come up with one thing, other
things sort of follow in a logical order and you just come with all these
ideas to put down and it kind of makes sense’.
Table 2: Four themes.
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as you are’ was designed to avoid reductive explanations for the problematic
behaviour and to encourage a more nuanced exploration of motives. One
participant summed up succinctly in the following comment the emotional
and intellectual challenge presented by this aspect of the intervention:
[…] I’m smart enough to not do that behaviour so how do I set up a
character that is as smart as me but still doesn’t get why the behaviour
is so bad?
discussion
Examples of participant writing indicated evidence of an understanding of and
ability to apply creative writing concepts such as scene construction, dialogue
and point of view. Writing samples also displayed a coherent thread connect-
ing the disparate components of the exercise (e.g., the two scenes amplified
characteristics and conflicts present in the snapshot and rounding questions).
Participant comments following each prompt indicated that the exercise
was effective in eliciting self-reflection and identification with ‘characters’.
Comments also indicated a growing awareness of the social context of health-
related behaviour and increased empathy with behaviour previously identi-
fied as unsympathetic. Interestingly, the intervention also prompted some
participants to relate principles explored in this intervention – for example, the
idea that smart people in challenging circumstances may engage in damaging
health behaviours, to past experiences with diverse populations. This find-
ing resonates with the research of Batson et al. demonstrating how increasing
empathy towards individual members of stigmatized groups can impact atti-
tudes towards the groups as a whole (1997).
Although some described the exercise as ‘challenging’, many found it to
be interesting and feasible and expressed the belief that imaginative work had
a role in improving clinical care.
This was a humanities in medicine conference, and consequently the
sample represented a high proportion of participants who had an existing
interest in literature and the arts; yet many were inexperienced with fiction
writing. As the exercises progressed, participant comments revealed an
increased understanding of how fiction writing actually works, insights that
further illuminate the mechanisms through which perspective-taking encour-
ages empathy.
The process fiction writers employ to create rounded characters takes
participants a step beyond many perspective-taking exercises in which
students picture themselves in a patient’s shoes. Instead, it requires them
to invent fictional people with pasts and futures, hopes, dreams and regrets.
In their research into the cognitive process associated with perspective
taking, Galinsky et al. (2005) note that interventions that offer simple direc-
tion to participants to take another’s perspective without detailed instruc-
tions achieved, at best, superficial results. The very fact that fiction writing is
perceived as difficult and is often unfamiliar to health professionals required
the facilitators to use a guided approach, which appears to have engaged
participants in deep acts of imagination.
Participant reactions to this challenge further suggest accordance with the
conceptual model of ‘self-other overlap’ that Galinsky et al. (2005) propose
to be at the heart of perspective-taking’s power to reduce prejudice. For
example, one participant observed that it was ‘hard to stay true to fiction’
JAAH_6.3_Saffran_247-255.indd 252 3/9/16 12:09:48 PM
Building character
253
and that the lines between what the writer thought and remembered and the
character thought had become ‘blurred’. The subsequent discussion touched
on the extent to which fiction writers do incorporate elements of real life, often
autobiographical details, in imaginary scenes and stories in order to enhance
verisimilitude and engage emotion. The ability of participants to draw on
their own memories and emotions, particularly during the phase where they
answered ‘rounding’ questions about their characters’ inner lives, appeared to
increase their ability to understand the problematic behaviour.
One participant wrote, ‘Once I wrote down the behaviour, absolutely
every question in here answered why that person behaved the way she did’.
Upon analysis, the demographic data describing each fictional charac-
ter raise some questions regarding instructions to participants during that
phase of the intervention. Specifically, was there any effort by participants to
self-correct for socially acceptable responses before recording demographic
details to describe the character in their mental snapshot? Most study partici-
pants appeared to be of European American descent, but as they were not
asked to report their race or ethnicity that information may be inaccurate or
incomplete. Notably, none of the fictional characters created by the partic-
ipants were under-represented minorities, except for one Hispanic. It may
well be that participants hesitated to choose a character of a different race or
ethnicity, or having imagined such a character in their initial scenario hesi-
tated to describe that character as such, in order to avoid seeming biased. In
future iterations, the moderators would recommend including an instruction
to participants to record the data without deviating from their initial mental
picture, as well as instructions asking them to record their own age, gender
and ethnicity.
Our research was limited by the relatively small number of participants
in the workshop, as well as the inclusion of participants other than medical
professionals and no participants in the medical training stage. A larger and
more uniform group of participants could increase the external validity of the
results, and piloting the programme with medical students or residents would
be useful in determining its relevance for medical curricula. It is unknown
whether or not any insights gained through the intervention will be translated
into clinical practice and/or might result in measurable increases in cultural
competency or empathy using an externally validated instrument.
While efforts are being made to reduce disparities in health outcomes and
increase access to quality care, medical education is still developing strate-
gies to train physicians to address these issues in daily practice. Previous
research has found medical humanities useful in encouraging self-reflection
and creative thinking and increasing students’ tolerance for ambiguity. In
at least one study, the ability of medical students to tolerate ambiguity was
associated with positive attitudes towards underserved populations (Wayne
et al. 2011). Building further on research that associates perspective-taking
with increased patient satisfaction and reduced stereotyping among provid-
ers in clinical encounters (Blatt et al. 2010), the intervention described here
focuses participants’ attention on non-clinical settings and risk behaviour.
This innovation may offer further useful insights as medical educators seek
to employ humanities interventions to encourage a focus on social context,
population health and cultural competence, recognized as increasingly
important to the modern practice of medicine (Institute of Medicine Health
Care Quality Initiative 2001). Subsequent research might illuminate the
extent to which similar interventions might assist public health professionals
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Lise Saffran | Michelle Teti | Michelle Long
254
in developing prevention programmes that are attuned to cultural and social
obstacles.
With a few notable exceptions (Reisman et al. 2006; Pallai and Armijo 2013)
most reflective writing interventions in the health professions focus on non-
fiction and encourage participants to ‘write clearly about their experiences,
describe their observations and distinguish between observations and conclu-
sions’ (Hatem and Ferrara 2001: 14) or ‘create original work addressing diffi-
cult or meaningful experiences with patients, colleagues or teachers’ (Shapiro
et al. 2006: 232). The intervention described in this article prioritizes imagina-
tion over experience, however; it asks participants to invent fictional characters
and scenarios rather than reflect on past events. In its phased approach to
writing, the intervention may offer some strategies for increasing the effec-
tiveness of perspective-taking exercises by demonstrating the ‘vivid, process-
oriented and descriptive’ instructions called for by Galinsky et al. (2005: 120).
Based on the results of this pilot workshop, we believe that guided fiction
writing may have something unique to contribute to strategies for improv-
ing provider self-reflection and understanding of the social and cultural influ-
ences on health-related behaviour.
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Building character
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suggested citation
Saffran, L., Teti, M. and Long, M. (2015), ‘Building character: A creative
writing intervention to encourage clinician reflection on the social deter-
minants of health’, Journal of Applied Arts & Health, 6: 3, pp. 247–255, doi:
10.1386/jaah.6.3.247_1
contRibutoR details
Lise Saffran (MPH, MFA) is the Director of the Master of Public Health
Programme at the University of Missouri.
Contact: MU MPH Program, 802 Lewis Hall, Columbia, Missouri 65211,
USA.
E-mail: saffranl@health.missouri.edu
Dr Michelle Teti is Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at the University of
Missouri, School of Health Professions.
Contact: Department of Health Sciences, 512 Clark Hall, Columbia, Missouri,
65211, USA.
E-mail: tetim@health.missouri.edu
Michelle Long (MPH) is a former Programme Fellow for the Master of Public
Health Programme, and an Adjunct Instructor for the Department of Health
Sciences at the University of Missouri.
Contact: Kaiser Family Foundation, 1330 G St. NW, Washington, DC, 20001,
USA.
E-mail: michellelong426@gmail.com
Lise Saffran, Michelle Teti and Michelle Long have asserted their right under
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors
of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
JAAH_6.3_Saffran_247-255.indd 255 3/17/16 9:10:40 PM
Intellect is an independent academic publisher of books and journals, to view our catalogue or order our titles visit
www.intellectbooks.com or E-mail: journals@intellectbooks.com. Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, UK, BS16 3JG.
Applied Theatre Research
ISSN 20493010 | Online 20493029
2 issues per volume | Volume 1, 2013
Applied Theatre Research is the worldwide journal for theatre and drama in non-tradi-
tional contexts. It focuses on drama, theatre and performance with specific audiences
or participants in a range of social contexts and locations. Contexts include education,
developing countries, business and industry, political debate and social action, with
children and young people, and in the past, present or future; locations include thea-
tre which happens in places such as streets, conferences, war zones, refugee camps,
prisons, hospitals and village squares as well as on purpose-built stages.
The primary audience consists of practitioners and scholars of drama, theatre and
allied arts, as well as educationists, teachers, social workers and community leaders
with an awareness of the significance of theatre and drama, and an interest in inno-
vative and holistic approaches to theatrical and dramatic production, learning and
community development. Contributors include eminent and experienced workers and
scholars in the field, but cutting-edge contemporary and experimental work from new
or little-known practitioners is also encouraged.
The journal has a global focus and representation, with an explicit policy of ensuring
that the best and most exciting work in all continents and as many countries as pos-
sible is represented and featured. Cultural, geographical, gender and socio-economic
equity are recognised where possible, including in the Review Board.
Editors
Penny Bundy
Griffith University
p.bundy@griffith.edu.au
John O’Toole
Melbourne University
j.otoole@unimelb.edu.au
Reviews Editor
Michael Balfour
m.balfour@griffith.edu.au
intellect
www.intellectbooks.com publishers
of original
thinking
JAAH_6.3_Saffran_247-255.indd 256 3/15/16 9:05:46 AM
... To date, there has been no research targeting these three psychological constructs (empathy, perspective taking, and the fundamental attribution error) in the context of health behavior. To address this gap in the literature, we propose the use of a creative narrative writing intervention designed to encourage writers to reflect on the social determinants of health behaviors [40,41]. The target of this writing exercise is a fictional character that engages in a negative, and controversial, health behavior: smoking while pregnant. ...
Article
Full-text available
Societal expectations of self-care and responsible actions toward others may produce bias against those who engage in perceived self-harming behavior. This is especially true for health professionals, who have dedicated themselves to helping reduce the burden of illness and suffering. Research has shown that writing narratives can increase perspective taking and empathy toward other people, which may engender more positive attitudes. Two studies examined whether creating a fictional narrative about a woman who smokes cigarettes while pregnant could increase positive attitudes toward the woman who smokes and reduce the internal attributions made for her behavior. Across both experiments, the narrative writing intervention increased participants’ empathy and perspective taking, evoked more positive attitudes toward a woman who smokes cigarettes while pregnant, and increased external attributions for her behavior. This work supports our hypothesis that narrative writing would be an efficacious intervention promoting attitude change toward patients who engage in unhealthy, and often contentious, behaviors. This work also suggests that narrative writing could be a useful intervention for medical professionals and policy makers leading to more informed policy or treatment recommendations, encouraging empathy for patients, and engendering a stronger consideration of how external forces can play a role in someone’s seemingly irresponsible behavior.
... They make assumptions, draw conclusions, and try to figure out what is going on, whether or not the data they have is complete. Clinicians participating in the exercise have noted that in their own encounters with patients, for example, they observe a tendency to interpret a patient's failure to understand medical advice as a lack of intelligence rather than an issue with health literacy or with the provider's own ability to communicate (Saffran et al. 2015). The guided fiction writing exercise, therefore, does not ask students as clinicians to construct stories in a vacuum. ...
Article
Full-text available
Research linking reading literary fiction to empathy supports health humanities programs in which reflective writing accompanies close readings of texts, both to explore principles of storytelling (narrative arc and concrete language) and to promote an examination of biases in care. Little attention has been paid to the possible contribution of guided fiction-writing in health humanities curricula toward enhancing cultural competence among health professionals, both clinical and community-based. Through an analysis of the short story “Pie Dance” by Molly Giles, juxtaposed with descriptions of specific writing exercises, this paper explains how the demands of writing fiction promote cultural competency.
Article
Full-text available
Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies. Yet little research has investigated what fosters this skill, which is known as Theory of Mind (ToM), in adults. We present five experiments showing that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective ToM (experiments 1 to 5) and cognitive ToM (experiments 4 and 5) compared with reading nonfiction (experiments 1), popular fiction (experiments 2 to 5), or nothing at all (experiments 2 and 5). Specifically, these results show that reading literary fiction temporarily enhances ToM. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art.
Article
Full-text available
The present article offers a conceptual model for how the cognitive processes associated with perspective-taking facilitate social coordination and foster social bonds. We suggest that the benefits of perspective-taking accrue through an increased self-other overlap in cognitive representations and discuss the implications of this perspective-taking induced self-other overlap for stereotyping and prejudice. Whereas perspective-taking decreases stereotyping of others (through application of the self to the other), it increases stereotypicality of one’s own behavior (through inclusion of the other in the self). To promote social bonds, perspective-takers utilize information, including stereotypes, to coordinate their behavior with others. The discussion focuses on the implications, both positive and negative, of this self-other overlap for social relationships and discusses how conceptualizing perspective-taking, as geared toward supporting specific social bonds, provides a framework for understanding why the effects of perspective-taking are typically target-specific and do not activate a general helping mind-set. Through its attempts to secure social bonds, perspective-taking can be an engine of social harmony, but can also reveal a dark side, one full of ironic consequences.
Article
Full-text available
Little published research details the risk factors for the decline in students' attitudes toward underserved populations during medical school. The authors assessed the association between this attitude change and intolerance of ambiguity (the tendency to perceive novel or complex situations as sources of threat), since treating underserved populations often involves a high level of complexity. The University of New Mexico School of Medicine administered a survey assessing attitudes toward underserved populations at matriculation and at graduation to seven consecutive medical school classes (matriculation years 1999 to 2005). The university also administered a survey measuring tolerance of ambiguity at matriculation. Five hundred twenty-nine students were eligible to complete both surveys between 1999 and 2009. Three hundred thirteen (59%) students completed the attitude survey at matriculation and graduation. Attitude scores for a majority of students (69%) decreased from matriculation to graduation. Changes in scores ranged from +25 to -35; the average change was -4.5. Linear regression analysis showed that those who were tolerant of ambiguity (top 20% of tolerance of ambiguity scores) were significantly less likely to have declines in attitudes toward the underserved; the coefficient was 3.69 (P = .003). Other factors independently associated with maintaining high attitude scores were being female and starting medical school at age 24 or younger. Attention to, and practice with, ambiguous situations may help moderate decreases in attitudes toward underserved populations. Medical education should address the fact that physicians face much ambiguity and should offer students tools to help them respond to ambiguous clinical situations.
Article
Full-text available
Results of 3 experiments suggest that feeling empathy for a member of a stigmatized group can improve attitudes toward the group as a whole. In Experiments 1 and 2, inducing empathy for a young woman with AIDS (Experiment 1) or a homeless man (Experiment 2) led to more positive attitudes toward people with AIDS or toward the homeless, respectively. Experiment 3 tested possible limits of the empathy-attitude effect by inducing empathy toward a member of a highly stigmatized group, convicted murderers, and measuring attitudes toward this group immediately and then 1-2 weeks later. Results provided only weak evidence of improved attitudes toward murderers immediately but strong evidence of improved attitudes 1-2 weeks later.
Article
Medical educators have used the visual arts for a variety of instrumental purposes, such as sharpening trainees' skills in observation, description, critical thinking, and communication. The arts have also served as means to more humanistic ends-that is, as a mode of self-care for house officers coping with grief and as a medium for reflecting on the meaning of illness and the nature of doctoring. More generally, art can serve as an expression of identity, as a form of social critique, and as a means to develop a sense of community of shared values. At the University of Michigan Medical School, the creation of original artwork (visual or otherwise) has been a major part of the Family Centered Experience, a longitudinal learning activity based on the stories that patient-volunteers tell of living with chronic illness. The purpose of this article is to explore how the creation of original art may serve as concrete evidence of the types of tacit learning and understanding that students gain through human interactions in medicine. The evidence of learning is not achieved via behaviorist notions of "demonstrating competence"; instead, student interpretive projects are visual or musical expressions of the affective, experiential, cognitive, and existential lessons students have learned through their long-term relationships with patient-volunteers. The overall aim of this article is to provide additional theoretical foundations, as well as practical information, that may guide the incorporation of the humanities and arts into the training of physicians.
Article
The intersection of two trends in health intervention has the potential to fundamentally change the practice of medicine. First, research into the social determinants of health is revealing the mechanisms by which living conditions cause disease. Second, the restructuring of primary care around preventive interventions represents the convergence point of medicine and public health. These trends have profound implications for medical education. Whereas traditional educational paradigms favor a "bottom-up" approach to disease-focusing on molecular origins or organ systems-new paradigms must emphasize the entire causal chain of ill health to facilitate the understanding of novel interventions available to tomorrow's clinician.
Article
To assess whether perspective-taking, which researchers in other fields have shown to induce empathy, improves patient satisfaction in encounters between student-clinicians and standardized patients (SPs). In three studies, randomly assigned students (N = 608) received either a perspective-taking instruction or a neutral instruction prior to a clinical skills examination in 2006-2007. SP satisfaction was the main outcome in all three studies. Study 1 involved 245 third-year medical students from two universities. Studies 2 and 3 extended Study 1 to examine generalizability across student and SP subpopulations. Study 2 (105 physician assistant students, one university) explored the effect of perspective-taking on African American SPs' satisfaction. Study 3 (258 third-year medical students, two universities) examined the intervention's effect on students with high and low baseline perspective-taking tendencies. Intervention students outscored controls in patient satisfaction in all studies: Study 1: P = .01, standardized effect size = 0.16; Study 2: P = .001, standardized effect size = 0.31; Study 3: P = .009, standardized effect size = 0.13. In Study 2, perspective-taking improved African American SPs' satisfaction. In Study 3, intervention students with high baseline perspective-taking tendencies outscored controls (P = .0004, standardized effect size = 0.25), whereas those with low perspective-taking tendencies did not (P = .72, standardized effect size = 0.00). Perspective-taking increased patient satisfaction in all three studies, across medical schools, clinical disciplines, and racially diverse students and SPs. Perspective-taking as a means for improving patient satisfaction deserves further exploration in clinical training and practice.
Article
The U.S. chronic illness burden is increasing and is felt more strongly in minority and low-income populations: in 2005, 133 million Americans had at least one chronic condition. Prevention and management of chronic disease are best performed by multidisciplinary teams in primary care and public health. However, the future health care work-force is not projected to include an appropriate mix of personnel capable of staffing such teams. To prepare for the growing chronic disease burden, a larger interdisciplinary primary care workforce is needed, and payment for primary care should reward practices that incorporate multidisciplinary teams.
Article
We qualitatively examined themes covered in a creative writing elective designed to enhance pre-clinical medical students' writing, observation, and reflection skills relative to experiences in their medical education. Qualitative analysis of writings' themes was carried out via iterative consensus building process and validated through member checks and literature review. Fourteen students completed the elective, seven for each year it was given. Students submitted 86 written pieces. Qualitative analysis demonstrated the presence of nine themes: students' role confusion, developing a professional identity, medicine as a calling, physician privilege and power, humanizing the teacher, the limits of medicine, death and dying, anticipating future challenges, and identification with the patient. Students evaluated this creative writing course favorably, indicating value in writing and reflection. Themes covered are of concern to second-year medical students as well as other trainees and practicing physicians. Writing may aid in the professional development of physicians.