Healing Arts: Narrative Medicine and Pain Care

Credit

Handouts/Brochure

Speaker

Julia Schneider, MA, LMT, C-IAYT Related seminars and products

---

Julia Schneider holds a master’s in literature from University of Texas at Austin and is a graduate of Columbia University’s professional certification in narrative medicine. She is the founder of RISE Wellness Center in Austin, TX, a team of psychotherapists and massage/yoga therapists specializing in treating persisting pain. She is also the founder and director of NarrativeRx, an international learning community for healthcare providers, patients, teachers, and activists interested in deepening their listening skills through literature, philosophy, and the arts. She hosts group workshops, teaches online courses, and provides one-on-one training in narrative medicine at NarrativeRx.com.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Julia Schneider is the director and founder of Narrative Rx. She receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Julia Schneider is a member of the Western Literature Association, the International Association of Yoga Therapy, Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals, and the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork.

Additional Info

Visit our FAQ page at www.pesi.com/faq or contact us at www.pesi.com/info

For live CE credit, you must watch the live webcast in its entirety at its scheduled time and complete the CE quiz and evaluation within one week. You will have access for 90 days after the program for review.

Please note: There will be a lunch and two 15-minute breaks; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Lunch and break times will be announced by the speaker and at their discretion. A more detailed schedule is available upon request.

Objectives

1. To develop our skills as close readers of art so that we become more attentive to the stories of our patients and learn how to listen and reflect with empathy.
2. To provide a psychosocial complement to biomedical models of healthcare.
3. To build a safe space for healthcare providers to connect, collaborate, and process our experiences through the lens of art.

Outline

• What is Narrative Medicine?
  • ”A medical approach that uses people’s stories in clinical practice, research, and education as a way to promote healing” ~ NYU School of Law
  • ”A response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient” ~Rita Charon
  • As we practice absorbing, interpreting, and reflecting on the stories told in literature and other artworks, we are simultaneously learning how to absorb, interpret, and reflect on the stories our patients tell us in a clinical setting – and to be as moved by them.
• Experiential Learning
  • Narrative competence is built experientially rather than didactically
  • Didactic learning: explanatory, removed, cognitively fixed, theoretical, individual, focused on the question “what”
  • Experiential Learning: exploratory, immersive, cognitively flexible, practical, collaborative, focused on the questions “how” and “why”
  • Through the lens of art, we approach our self-stories obliquely with fresh curiosity. By allowing our self-stories to brush up against the stories of others, we shake the dust of our own curated and stagnant personal histories
• Pain Science Stories: An Online Collaborative
  • Review of our 15-week qualitative research study with pain care providers from around the world
  • Student self-assessments pre-and-post study; the impact of Narrative Medicine on practitioner listening skills, empathy, and burnout

• Close Reading
  • The careful, sustained analysis of an artwork that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deeper understanding of the text’s meaning
  • Close Reading Workshop: Picasso’s Weeping Woman
  • Take a few minutes to observe this painting in silence. As you observe, I invite you to slow down, be with this painting, enter its space and perspective, and consider the ways it speaks to you
  • After a few minutes of observation, you might begin to notice that you can read this painting a lot like you can read a story from a book. Let’s begin our discussion by examining this painting’s setting and plot:
    • What is happening in this painting?
    • Describe the woman’s expression. Does she have more than one?
    • Describe how the color palette and the geometry shifts as you move toward the center of the painting. What does this shift in color and geometry suggest about suffering?
  • Students use chat box or “raise hand” to answer the close reading questions above
• Reflective Writing
  • Timed writing prompts are an experiment in self-discovery. Writing is a way of learning what one knows
  • Writing “in the shadow” of the text: an invitation for you to creatively express how this story has impacted and interacted with your own personal story
  • Reflective Writing Workshop
  • Students free-write for 5 minutes on the following prompt: “Give this painting a voice” OR “Where have you seen this face before?”
• Attentive Listening
  • Thinking “with” rather than “against”
  • An ethic of listening humbly and generously that gives storytellers the benefit of the doubt (even as we ask them questions and make observations that will help then refine their thoughts)
  • ”In listening for the other, we listen for ourselves.” ~Craig Irvine
  • Attentive Listening Workshop
  • We will share our reflective writing with the group, “close reading” each other’s writing with the same generous attention to detail we gave Weeping Woman. We will ground our observations in the details of what is being told, observing the details of plot, time, setting, perspective, and imagery
  • Ask for 1-3 volunteers to read their responses aloud to the group. Leader demonstrates active listening/reflecting and asks volunteers from the group to share their reflections too
  • If possible, plenary group breaks into small groups via breakout rooms to practice listening and reflecting to each other’s stories
  • Sharing is never an obligation. If a student would prefer not to share what they’ve written, I will encourage them to share what it felt like to write something so vulnerable instead
• Integration
  • Group Discussion (volunteers “raise hand” to answer): After all this reading, creating, and sharing, how do you feel?
  • Share a nugget of wisdom you’ve picked up here
  • How does this relate to your pain care practice?

• Recap: The 3 Movements of Narrative Medicine: These “movements” are cultivated through the practices of close reading, attentive listening, and reflective writing:
  • Attention: the “heightened focus” that a listener devotes to a teller
  • Representation: a retelling of what is told to us in the effort to better comprehend a story
  • Affiliation: the relationship that develops between storyteller and listening as a result of true listening and generous reflection
• The Ethics of Caregiving
  • ”Spaceship Ethics”: A coping mechanism in which caregivers consider themselves removed from, or above, the plights of the ill and dying. A disembodied perspective that denies both the patient and the caregiver humanity vs
  • Narrative Ethics: An ethical practice of positioning oneself on an equal plane with a storyteller, not allowing oneself to be affected, changed, and moved to action by a patient’s story
  • ”To decide to listen, to attend to the other’s story, is already to take an ethical stand. To enter the story, the listener must experience its moral complexity in all its ambiguity and challenge to one’s own moral sense” ~ Arthur Frank, The Wounded Storyteller
• Contact Info and References
  • Limitations of the research and potential risks

Target Audience

• Physical Therapists
• Physical Therapist Assistants
• Occupational Therapists
• Occupational Therapist Assistants
• Licensed Massage Therapists
• Chiropractors
• Athletic Trainers
• Nurses
• Nurse Practitioners