Category: Workshop

Some Spaces available for the last Online Poetry Crash Cart tomorrow

Some Spaces available for the last Online Poetry Crash Cart tomorrow 🗓

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

Poetry Crash Cart: Loving and Working During Covid-19 for Health Care Students and Workers 

This is the last of an online, weekly hour and a half of poetry workshop for health care students and clinical workers. For people working in acute and ongoing moments of need. For all of us now. What might poetry do here?

Poet Ronna Bloom will introduce poetry that has been used in hospitals, and is being shared widely now online, and will read poems that speak to different moments and needs. The aim is to offer the perhaps tired student and practitioner a listening experience, a conversation about poetry, and a chance to write.

Each session will focus on poems and prompts for writing aimed at bringing us more fully into awareness with spontaneity and self-care. No writing experience necessary.

One more session TOMORROW, a few added spaces ——> Wednesday May 20th  4-5:30PM

Register at Eventbrite for details and a Zoom link. There is no fee to participate.

Ronna Bloom is the author of six books of poetry. Her most recent book, The More, was published by Pedlar Press in 2017 and long listed for the City of Toronto Book Award. Her poems have been recorded by the CNIB and translated into Spanish, Bangla, and Chinese.

Ronna developed the first Poet in Residence program at Sinai Health which ran from 2012-2019. She is currently Poet in Community to the University of Toronto and Poet in Residence in the Health, Arts and Humanities Programme. Her “Spontaneous Poetry Booth” and “RX for Poetry” have been featured in hospitals, fundraisers and local fairs in Canada and abroad. She runs workshops and gives talks on poetry, spontaneity, and awareness through writing. ronnabloom.com

Workshop Conditions : 

By requesting to join this ZOOM writing workshop, you confirm that you are a health professional, clinician or health professions student. Any personal narratives shared must respect patient confidentiality and their right to complete privacy. If verbally sharing a piece of writing about a clinical encounter during the workshop, you must change a patient’s name and omit /alter any other unique or identifying characteristics. Sessions must not be audio or video-recorded.

Online conduct university guidelines can be found at:

https://utmedhumanities.wordpress.com/blog-moderation-guidelines/

Three online poetry sessions for healthcare workers and students - OK to drop in

Three online poetry sessions for healthcare workers and students – OK to drop in 🗓

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

Message from RONNA BLOOM-Poet In Residence For the Program In Health, Arts and Humanities:

Dear friends,

I write this note to you, wishing you well where you are, and with two things to share.

As Italy begins to step outside, I offer a new piece of writing, Venice Journals, published online this week by Ice Floe Press. It’s an excerpt of a manuscript in progress with poems and photographs from many visits. Sent with love for that wondrous city. May they/we emerge in health.

Starting today, I am doing a series of 3 poetry sessions:  The Poetry Crash Cart — Loving and Working During Covid-19 — for Health Care Workers and Students. This is a low pressure event — meant to be a rest — with poetry. I will introduce poetry that has been used in hospitals, and is being shared now widely online and will read poems that speak to different moments and needs. Then we’ll write. There are a few spots left. If you’re interested in joining something like this and you’re not in health care, please let me know.

Sending energy out in your direction.

Ronna

Venice Journals: poems and photographs

One tiny poem written as the pandemic began, “Dear Heart.” For anyone who needs it. xo

Virtual Creative Writing Group For Residents

Virtual Creative Writing Group For Residents 🗓

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

University of Toronto Residents’ Creative Writing Group

Are you interested in stretching your creative muscles? Looking to refine a creative work for publication? Or perhaps just to inject a dose of humanities into your medical practice?

The University of Toronto Residents’ Creative Writing Group is here to help! Now, more than ever, is a time for us to hone skills for self-expression.

We comprise of a group of residents and fellows at the University of Toronto interested in sharing and improving our writing. Meetings are held approximately once a month, 2 hours in length.

We welcome residents/fellows from any specialty, and with an interest in any genre of writing (narrative medicine pieces, poetry, fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction) as long as it’s written to be read.

Given the current public health landscape, our next meeting will be held over Zoom on Monday, April 20th, 2020 at 7:00pm. For this meeting, we will be joined by a very accomplished medical writer and current CMAJ Humanities Editor, Barbara Sibbald.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/862157092

If you wish to attend or would like more information, please join our facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1490804187882797/) or email me at jonah.himelfarb@mail.utoronto.ca.

Happy writing!

Jonah

Jonah Himelfarb
Internal Medicine Resident
University of Toronto
Jonah.Himelfarb@mail.utoronto.ca

Awake at Work

Awake at Work 🗓

Posted on by Allan Peterkin
In this session, use writing to explore how simply showing up and attending to your own experience is the starting point for attending to others. Through guided exercises, you’ll have the opportunity to notice your personal, professional, and physical responses –– whether you’re at a desk, in the community, or in a hospital room –– and to write about them in a reflective, open, non-evaluative way. See how being awake to yourself might help you be awake at work. No experience is necessary.

Time and place:
April 29, 2020
6PM-8PM
Via Zoom
 
Goals:
— Learn five rules for writing that can be used to reflect on one’s work, relationships, and life
— Engage with poetry as a tool for understanding and expressing challenges
— Increase awareness of the impact of the professional on the personal, and the personal on the professional
— Explore poetry and writing as practices of self-care

Workshop Leader
Ronna Bloom is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, The More (Pedlar Press, 2017) long-listed for the City of Toronto Book Award. Her poems have been recorded by the CNIB and translated into Spanish, Bangla, and Chinese. She is currently Poet in Community to the University of Toronto and Poet in Residence in the Health, Arts and Humanities Program. Her “Spontaneous Poetry Booth” and “RX for Poetry” have been featured in hospitals, conferences and fundraisers in Canada and abroad. She runs workshops and gives talks on poetry, spontaneity, and awareness through writing. ronnabloom.com

Open to all U of T Medical Students, Residents, and Learners from other disciplines. Sign up for one or both.

  To register contact ronna.bloom@utoronto.ca

Postcards from the Edge: Addressing Compassion Fatigue in Note Form

Postcards from the Edge: Addressing Compassion Fatigue in Note Form 🗓

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

WORKSHOP with Ronna Bloom

Postcards from the Edge:

Addressing Compassion Fatigue in Note Form

*** PLEASE NOTE: Expanded availability for virtual/online participation ***

April 15, 2020

Perhaps you are too overwhelmed to read this? Let’s be brief: this workshop will address impacts, physical or emotional, personal or professional, of caring for human suffering. In notes. A creative writing workshop. With other hesitant people. Using poems as guides. Have a rest; write something. No experience necessary.

Via Zoom
with Ronna Bloom-April 15, 2020 (See Ronna’s BIO below)

Open to all U of T Medical Students, Residents, and Learners from other disciplines.

To register contact ronna.bloom@utoronto.ca

Ronna Bloom (Workshop Leader)

Ronna Bloom is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, The More (Pedlar Press, 2017) long-listed for the City of Toronto Book Award. Her poems have been recorded by the CNIB and translated into Spanish, Bangla, and Chinese. She is currently Poet in Community to the University of Toronto and Poet in Residence in the Health, Arts and Humanities Programme. Her “Spontaneous Poetry Booth” and “RX for Poetry” have been featured in hospitals, conferences and fundraisers in Canada and abroad. She runs workshops and gives talks on poetry, spontaneity, and awareness through writing.

ronnabloom.com

JHI Program for the Arts 2020-2021 FUNDING Deadline Extended

JHI Program for the Arts 2020-2021 FUNDING Deadline Extended

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

FROM THE JACKMAN HUMANITIES INSTITUTE

Dear Colleagues:
The deadline for applications for funding in 2020-2021 for the JHI Program for the Arts is now extended to 15 April 2020 at midnight. A couple of provisions have also been adjusted to make it possible to fund online events and to encourage applicants to consider contingency plans for their events, should regular operations not be feasible when the time comes.
Applications are welcome from all continuing teaching and research members of the faculty.
Could you please share the revised Call for Applications (attached, and copied in below this message) with your mailing list to faculty members?
Sincerely,
Kim

—–
Dr. Kimberley Yates, Associate Director
Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto
170 St. George Street, Room 1029
Toronto, ON M5R 2M8
—————————————————————–

 Call for Proposals — REVISED

The Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts, 2020-2021

 Deadline for applications: EXTENDED TO 15 APRIL 

The Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts supports a range of events from small (up to $3000) to larger (up to $10,000) designed to enhance, improve and raise the profile of the Arts at the University. Activities may include visitors, lecture series, symposia, exhibitions, performances, or other imaginative and arts initiatives, which will serve to foster the work of the Jackman Humanities Institute and to represent the leading scholarship of the humanities at the University of Toronto. Each year there will be a priority for at least one event that engages the wider public. The Program gives priority to activities that range across multiple units and across more than one campus. It does not support activities that are routine matters of the sort that individual academic units would normally fund (e.g. departmental colloquia, learned society meetings, etc.). The Program also prefers activities that are related to the 2020-2021 theme—Collectives—but will consider proposals with other foci. Applications will be evaluated for conceptual fit, methodology, and research outputs.  

Proposals that include contingency plans for remote access, or are designed to run via remote access will be given priority. 

2020 – 2021: Collectives

From political parties to literary coteries, from fan groups to sports teams, from terrorist organizations to online groups, our collectives, associations, and communities are multiform and complex. How do we band together and why? In teaming up, how does membership of a collective affect one’s own agency and standing – what do we lose, what do we gain? Can collectives truly be agents and how do group dynamics emerge? How do we balance the interests between collectives, of individuals and collectives, and of the individual within the collective?

 Applications are invited from appointed members of the continuing research and teaching faculty at the University of Toronto.  To apply:

1.     You must have an active userID account on the JHI website

https://humanities.utoronto.ca

2.     Complete the online application form at
https://humanities.utoronto.ca/funding/20-21_Program_for_the_Arts

3.     Upload a description and rationale including fit with 2020-2021 annual theme of Collectives

(500 words—FIRM limit on length)

4.     Upload a proposed budget outline showing all known sources of support 

To clarify some of the preferences of the Program the following guidelines will normally apply:

1.     Funding will be awarded from $1,000-$3,000 (small), $3,000-$5,000 (medium) or up to $10,000 (large). Projects with a total budget (including all sources) over $30,000 will not be supported.

2.     Interdisciplinary activities that reach across units, and across campuses are given priority.

3.     Subventions for academic publishing will not be considered at this time; exhibition catalogues that are part of a larger academic event are the only publication that will be considered for funding.

4.     Significant costs (over $3,000) for performers will not be funded.

 

5.     Events of an annual or continual nature that have previously been funded through the Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts are normally eligible for one repeat year of funding; this need not be sequential.

6.     The JHI provides basic publicity package (in-house colour flyer on request, website event posting, JHI social media and newsletter, email announcement to departments and relevant EDU’s), and will make available the first-floor multipurpose room (seats 100) and tenth-floor meeting room (seats 25; weekdays 9-4 only) to all funded events.

7.     Costs for publicity and space rental will not normally be accepted as fundable budget items. A/V recordings of events funded by the Program for the Arts should be included as a regularly budgeted item in the budget proposal with an explanation of the research or pedagogical need for the recording included in the Description and Rationale document. The responsibility for arranging recordings will lie with the event organizer.

8.     Due to COVID-19 precautions, for 2020-2021, proposals that include either a contingency plan for remote access, or are designed to run via remote access, will be given priority. 

Questions?

For clarifications about this program, please contact JHI Director Professor Alison Keith at

jhi.director@utoronto.ca

For website assistance, please contact JHI Associate Director Dr. Kimberley Yates at jhi.associate@utoronto.ca

 

Applications due: Wednesday 15 April 2020 at midnight

Awake at Work

Awake at Work 🗓

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

Writing/Poetry and Reflection for Medical Students, Residents, and Health Professionals:

Awake at Work

In this session, use writing to explore how simply showing up and attending to your own experience is the starting point for attending to others. Through guided exercises, you’ll have the opportunity to notice your personal, professional, and physical responses –– whether you’re at a desk, in the community, or in a hospital room –– and to write about them in a reflective, open, non-evaluative way. See how being awake to yourself might help you be awake at work. No experience is necessary.

Time and place:
March 25, 2020 6PM-8PM
Mount Sinai Hospital,
600 University Avenue, Toronto, ON CANADA
OT room 941

CFD Narrative Medicine Course-some spots remain

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

REGISTRATION CLOSES SOON!

Narrative Medicine: Reading, Writing, and Reflecting in Clinical Practice, Teaching, and Self-Care – open for registration!

NarrMed_Prog

Narrative medicine, both in medical practice and education, is practiced with a focus on the skills of communication and collaboration which are essential to positive health outcomes. Learning how to write and reflect more expertly gives practitioners a powerful skill with which to build therapeutic and collegial relationships, improve patient outcomes, and live and work in a more reflective and engaged way. This program is designed for healthcare practitioners looking to inform their professional practice with narrative approaches to health and medicine, and those seeking to explore creative and reflective writing for their own sake.

This program will introduce the theory and practice of Narrative Medicine through a variety of practical activities and discussion. Participants will be guided through in-class exercises in close reading, close listening, and creative and reflective writing.

This new program consists of seven 2.5-hour sessions and will require in-between-session homework and reading.

Registration is now open! There is an associated registration fee of $700. A maximum of 17 participants will be accepted into the program on a first come-first serve basis.

Download: [Narrative Medicine program info – Spring 2020]

Please register at https://cfd.utoronto.ca/fostering/details/6 or email Farah.Friesen@unityhealth.to for more information

Exciting Narrative Medicine course at the CFD

Exciting Narrative Medicine course at the CFD

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

Please note this exciting Narrative Medicine course at the CFD:

Narrative Medicine: Reading, Writing, and Reflecting in Clinical Practice, Teaching, and Self-Care is for healthcare practitioners looking to inform their professional practice with narrative approaches to health and medicine.

Other CFD Programs of interest are described below :

CFD Programs open for registration and application starting January 2020!

The Centre for Faculty Development (CFD) is a partnership between the University of Toronto and St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto.

CFD is committed to supporting health care professionals evolve and grow in their Faculty roles.

The following programs may be of interest in helping you develop as a teacher, educator, academic leader, scholar, and advocate. Please see attached PDF for program details.

–          Stepping Stones: A Foundational Faculty Development Program provides support to health professionals in their multiple roles as teachers, educators, academic leaders, scholars, and advocates.

–          Education Scholars Program (ESP) is a longitudinal leadership development program for health professional educators that fosters academic excellence, creativity, and scholarly productivity in education.

–          Teaching for Transformation: Summer Education Institute (SEI) is a 3-day faculty development program for individuals iinterested in preparing health professions learners for the humanistic, social-relational aspects of health care practice and are committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion (e.g. collaboration and advocacy).

—          New and Evolving Academic Leaders (NEAL) Program aims to foster productive, visionary, and collaborative academic leaders in the Academic Health Science Network.

Centre for Faculty Development
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto at St. Michael’s Hospital
Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Centre
30 Bond Street, LKSKI Building, 4th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5B 1W8
416-864-6060 x77420
www.cfd.utoronto.ca

Visual Ways of Knowing at the McMichael Art Gallery - Spring 2020

Visual Ways of Knowing at the McMichael Art Gallery – Spring 2020 🗓

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

Visual Ways of Knowing
An Art-Based Workshop
for Medical Learners
at the McMichael Art Gallery

Objectives

Through viewing, describing, discussing, and creating visual art, learners will:

• practice alternative ways of perceiving & develop a vocabulary to articulate what they see
• work collaboratively with peers to generate meaning
• reflect on their cognitive and affective responses to visual images, which can be incorporated into course learning portfolios
• consider the connections between a keen appreciation of visual art and enhanced practice of medicine
• practice art-making as a means of understanding and reflection
• enhance their appreciation of the rich contexts of Canadian visual culture.

Eligibility To Participate

Registration is on a first-come-first-served basis for medical students, residents and fellows at the University of Toronto. Up to two spots may be reserved for medical educators if space permits. No art experience necessary. All materials, including entrance fee, provided thanks to funding from Post-MD Education at the University of Toronto. You must commit firmly to attending both parts of the workshop as there is a wait list for this seminar (see below).

Dates

In two parts:

1) Saturday, April 25: 10am to 3:30pm at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 10365 Islington Ave, Kleinburg; and

2) Later date (TBA) 7:30pm at a Private Curator/Collector’s home.

 

Faculty

• Michael J. Weinberg MD MSc BSc FRCS(C), Plastic Surgeon; Board Member, McMichael
• Shelley Wall MSc BMC PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Communications, UofT; Illustrator-in-Residence in the Faculty of Medicine, UofT; VTS-trained
• Eva-Marie Stern RP MA, Art Psychotherapist; Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychiatry, UofT; VTS-trained
• Allan Peterkin MD FRCP(C) FCFP, Professor of Psychiatry, UofT; Head of University of Toronto Program in Health and Humanities

For more information and to register:   emstern@artandmind.net

WITH THANKS TO POST-MD EDUCATION, FACULTY OF MEDICINE AND WWW.HEALTH-HUMANITIES.COM

Writing/Poetry and Reflection Workshops

Writing/Poetry and Reflection Workshops

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

Writing/Poetry and Reflection for Medical Students, Residents, and Health Professionals: 

Two Workshops

1. Awake at Work

In this session, use writing to explore how simply showing up and attending to your own experience is the starting point for attending to others. Through guided exercises, you’ll have the opportunity to notice your personal, professional, and physical responses –– whether you’re at a desk, in the community, or in a hospital room –– and to write about them in a reflective, open, non-evaluative way. See how being awake to yourself might help you be awake at work. No experience is necessary.

Time and place:
March 25, 2020 6PM-8PM
Mount Sinai Hospital,
600 University Avenue
OT room 941

2. Postcards from the Edge: Addressing Compassion Fatigue in Note Form

Perhaps you are too overwhelmed to read this? Let’s be brief: this workshop will address impacts, physical or emotional, personal or professional, of caring for human suffering. In notes. A creative writing workshop. With other hesitant people. Using poems as guides. Have a rest; write something. No experience necessary.

Time and place:

April 15, 2020 6PM-8PM
Mount Sinai Hospital,
600 University Avenue
OT room 941

Goals:
— Learn five rules for writing that can be used to reflect on one’s work, relationships, and life
— Engage with poetry as a tool for understanding and expressing challenges
— Increase awareness of the impact of the professional on the personal, and the personal on the professional
— Explore poetry and writing as practices of self-care

 

Workshop Leader

Ronna Bloom is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, The More (Pedlar Press, 2017) long-listed for the City of Toronto Book Award. Her poems have been recorded by the CNIB and translated into Spanish, Bangla, and Chinese. She is currently Poet in Community to the University of Toronto and Poet in Residence in the Health, Arts and Humanities Programme. Her “Spontaneous Poetry Booth” and “RX for Poetry” have been featured in hospitals, conferences and fundraisers in Canada and abroad. She runs workshops and gives talks on poetry, spontaneity, and awareness through writing. ronnabloom.com

Open to all U of T Medical Students, Residents, and Learners from other disciplines. Sign up for one or both. To register contact ronna.bloom@utoronto.ca

NEW NARRATIVE MEDICINE WRITING WORKSHOP/WRITING COMMUNITY

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

A Rooster for Asclepius: The Toronto Health Humanities Writing Group*

A new monthly health humanities workshop, focused on improving narrative medicine skills through creative and reflective writing, close reading of health-related writing, sharing and reflection on participant work, and ongoing discussion of the goals and methods of narrative-based medicine.

Physicians and health practitioners from other clinical fields interested in collaborating to deepen their involvement in health humanities are encouraged to apply to join this new group. Space permitting, scholars, practitioners and theorists from arts and  humanities  disciplines with an interest in the culture of medicine and healthcare,  are also invited to apply.

Typical workshop sessions will include some combination of: in-class writing exercises; discussion of a published health-related piece (short story, personal essay, etc.); discussion of theory and practice of narrative medicine as related and experienced by participants; sharing of written work by participants with guided feedback on same; visits by guest speakers working in other artistic genres and cognate fields. There will also be ongoing discussion of and collaboration on related opportunities and events in the health humanities.

This is a workshop rather than a class—an ongoing collaborative effort—and one of the principal aims is to foster a creative and supportive narrative community in the GTA.

Between sessions, reading, writing and discussion will continue via an online forum/discussion board.

Space is limited, so please make sure you can commit to this writing group. Refunds will not be issued.

Time and Location: 

Workshop sessions will be 3 hours in length, held in the evening.

Meetings will take place on the third Wednesday of each month from September to May.

Fee:

$200 (membership fee for one academic year). Some spaces for residents and doctoral students will be made available free of charge.

 

Facilitator details:

Damian Tarnopolsky has taught courses in Narrative Medicine at the Centre for Faculty Development at St. Michael’s Hospital for several years, and led writing and reflection workshops for medical students and residents as the Barbara Moon Fellow at Massey College from 2016-19. His books, Goya’s Dog and Lanzmann and Stories, have been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and the ReLit Award, among others, and his play The Defence won the 2019 Voaden Prize. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and has taught at Humber College and the School of Continuing Studies, where he was nominated for an Excellence in Teaching award. He works at Slingsby and Dixon, an editorial services company in Toronto.

 

How to apply:

Choose a health-related subject and write a 500-1000 word short story, personal essay,  poem/poems, dramatic scene, graphic medicine comic, or a piece in another genre of your choice.  Send your submission as a PDF or Word document to Damian Tarnopolsky at aroosterforasclepius@gmail.com  You will receive a response shortly thereafter.

 

*About the name of our writing group:

“Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius – pay it. Don’t forget.” – Plato, Phaedo, 118

As he went to face his death after being condemned by the Athenians, Socrates enjoined his friends to make a sacrifice to Asclepius, god of healing. It’s likely that with his last words he meant to say that he was grateful to be cured of the disease of life, and to pass into a realm of truth. It’s possible, however, that he was speaking ironically.