Palliative Care Writer's Workshop

We propose to hold a two-day intensive writer’s workshop for 12 palliative care fellows, faculty and other interdisciplinary team members (social workers, nurses, chaplains) in the Palliative Care section at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Participants will learn basic principles of good writing, work on writing exercises, write stories and essays, and give each other feedback. The sessions will be led by Drs. Anna Riesman and Lisa Sanders, who hold a similar annual workshop at Yale for resident physicians (http://residency.med.yale.edu/writershop/) [1]. Participants will continue to revise their essays and stories with ongoing mentorship upon the completion of the workshop. We anticipate that the workshop will enhance practitioners’ powers of observation, improve teamwork, increase empathy and help the participants to reflect on their experience practicing palliative care through learning the craft of writing.