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Department Collaborations

Memorial Art Gallery PhotoInterdisciplinary Collaborations with the Memorial Art Gallery

Interdisciplinary Partnership with the Office for Equity and Inclusion

"Don’t touch me, you #@*!": Using Humanities/Performing Arts to Practice Clinical Skills and Develop an Institutional Culture of Inclusion and Respect

Taking care of patients requires clinicians to establish positive therapeutic relationships even under challenging conditions and, unfortunately, medical professionals increasingly encounter workplace discrimination by patients. This project aims to construct the path from a culture of silence and attendant distress, shame, uncertainty, and anger in the face of discriminatory bias to a culture that helps targets and bystanders to respectfully respond to discriminatory bias. Silence harms the educational and therapeutic environments, causes moral distress in the targeted individuals and allies, and creates potential legal liability.

Dr. Adrienne Morgan, URMC Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and SMD Senior Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion, and Margie Hodges Shaw, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Humanities & Bioethics created workshops to teach the knowledge and skills to appropriately address bias and discrimination in the workplace. Some workshops use prerecorded videos of incidents of discrimination (religious bias) and in other workshops, the participants create scripts depicting incidents of bias that occurred in their setting.

In 2018, the Paul M. Schyve Center for Bioethics provided summer funding for two students, Nina Rizk and Shaunpaul Jones, to work on this project. Katherine Burke, M.F.A., provided initial pedagogical training for this project.

Health Humanities/BOA Editions Ltd. Publication of a Poetry Anthology

Building Students’ Narrative Skills in Medical History-Taking