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Department of Humanities Newsletter
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"fungus and fauna, 2021" fused glass mosaic created by Hummelstown artist Linda Billet
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for the Penn State Health Lime Spring Outpatient Center–Hematology/Oncology
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Made possible by a generous gift from Roger and Grace Moyer
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Professor and Chair, Department of Humanities
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Professor, Public Health Sciences
Penn State College of Medicine
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Edward S. Diggs Professor Emerita, Virginia Tech
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Department Chair's Message
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I am writing this message in late fall when the oak tree outside my window is a brilliant auburn and the plants below a mess of wilted green and dying leaves. The dogs snuffle through the underbrush looking for the critters that live there. Each time I look down from my home office window, I think, “I’ll have to clear out those plants.” Yet I procrastinate, enjoying the passive observation of bloom and decay.
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When you read this message, it will be early January—cold, leafless, and often gray, as Pennsylvania winters are wont to be. I am looking forward to what the wild garden will look like then. This is my pandemic silver lining—attending to the garden daily, checking in on the soil and shrubs, making sure there is a place for toads and chipmunks to hide, watching plants grow, blossom, wither, and die.
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We have worked in the midst of terrible losses and yet we have persevered. Being a member of this wonderful community—committed, charitable, healing—is another silver lining. In Humanities, we’ve been busy designing new courses, applying for and receiving grant funding, gathering data, and writing up results. We’ve explored new ideas, tested out old ones, and challenged our perspectives. Above all, we’ve been paying attention—for many of us, the world as it is lived is the setting for our investigations. Read on to see what we’ve been up to.
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Education Update
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Drawing on Art to Hone Observational and Analytical Skills
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Photo credit: Mark Stephens, MD
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Inspired by their participation in a Harvard Macy Institute Fellowship, three Humanities faculty are using the visual arts to refine medical students’ observational skills and spark new understandings of data.
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The Art Museum-based Health Professions Education Fellowship introduces pedagogical methods and practices that “help illuminate different perspectives, promote greater insight, and facilitate communication,” said Michael Flanagan, MD, assistant dean for student affairs (University Park curriculum) and professor, Family and Community Medicine, who participated in the 2020 Fellowship cohort.
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This fall, the UP curriculum included several sessions at the Penn State Palmer Museum of Art developed to emphasize first-year students’ observational and communication skills. Those sessions were designed by Flanagan and UP colleague Mark Stephens, MD, interim associate dean for medical education at UP, and professor, family and community medicine. “Arts-based activities provide an opportunity to practice skills and strategies that are relevant to medicine—awareness of biases, value of multiple perspectives, empathy,” said Stephens, a 2019 Fellow.
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Kimberly Myers, PhD, professor of Humanities and Medicine at Penn State College of Medicine, a fall 2021 Fellow, is drawing on the program for “Observation & Interpretation,” a new Humanities course for first-year medical students at Hershey that is co-directed with Justen Aprile, MD.
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“By exploring how people experience a piece of art, we learn that our perspectives can be limited,” Myers said. “Listening to others’ observations can help us comprehend more completely and therefore interpret more accurately. Ideally, experiencing the arts also leads to empathy for others, another fundamental goal of practicing medicine.”
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Research Roundup
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Michael J. Green, MD, Comics in Medicine
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Artwork by: Michael J. Green, MD
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What do you do when your long-awaited sabbatical coincides with the worst pandemic of the century and your sabbatical plans include much international travel? You cancel your trips and spend a lot of time Zooming on your porch which you modify to become a makeshift home-office and art studio.
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It turns out, while COVID has been a nightmare for public health, the economy, and democratic norms, it was a sabbatical boon for this physician-artist who had no trouble finding ample material to arouse dormant creative ideas. During my nine-month leave, I explored ways of integrating creativity and art making into medical education, and collaborating with people around the world who shared this passion. Through the wonders of Zoom, I enrolled in several online courses in Wisconsin, London, and Germany and further developed my artistic practice while learning myriad techniques for integrating an artist’s way of thinking into medical education. Some examples of my work can be seen in Cleaver Magazine.
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Since returning, I have convened the first-ever “Comics Cohort” of medical students, a group who respond to select Humanities Phase 1 class assignments by making comics to visually express their understanding of course materials. Stay tuned to see what they produce.
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Ethics Corner
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Introducing the MSHMC’s Ethics Consultation Service
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Who should make medical decisions for my patient who lacks decisional capacity? Should I do a necessary procedure on an adolescent patient who does not want it? Am I required to give what I believe is futile end-of-life care if the family is insisting on it?
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The MSHMC Ethics Consultation Service (ECS) is available to help answer these questions. The ECS is a clinical service, accessible through the hospital operator, and available to healthcare providers who encounter ethics questions in the care of patients. Anyone involved in the care of an individual patient, inpatient or outpatient, may request an ethics consultation by calling the operator and asking for the ethicist on call (Monday–Friday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m.).
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The ECS is directed by Rebecca Volpe, PhD, associate professor, Humanities, and includes clinicians with training and expertise in clinical ethics.
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Professor, Departments of Medicine and Humanities;
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Senior Consultant for Educational Innovation at the Regional Medical Campus at UP
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“There is always a next question.”
For Dan Wolpaw, questions often matter more than answers.
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“In the short term, students may view their careers in terms of answers, but in the long term, their personal and professional lives will be about asking and navigating questions,” said Wolpaw, professor of Medicine and Humanities who retired from Penn State in December 2021.
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“Patients are our classrooms. Real learning depends on the questions we ask ourselves, the uncertainties that we explore, and on what the Japanese call ‘shoshin’, or beginner’s mind.”
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Wolpaw’s commitment to inquiry, exploration, and discovery has been a hallmark of his 40+ years in medical education, first at Case Western Reserve University, where he received his medical degree and then taught for three decades, and, more recently, at Penn State College of Medicine.
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This commitment has guided him through numerous educational leadership positions and has been an important focus of his scholarly work. It has also been foundational to the courses he developed, codeveloped, or directed on subjects ranging from critical thinking to immunology to health systems science.
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His accomplishments and innovation in medical education have earned him several national awards including recognition for his career achievements in Medical Education from the Society for General Internal Medicine and, most recently, the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award from the American Association of Medical Colleges in 2020.
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Deadline to submit your
Wild Onions entries is Jan. 15
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Although we have selected the theme, "Touch," Wild Onions encourages and accepts submissions on all topics.
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Wild Onions is a journal featuring creative expression in the form of poetry, prose, visual art and photography by members of our community, including patients, students, clinicians, faculty, staff, family members and volunteers. In the 2022 issue, we will explore the sensation of “touch” – one of the most basic and integral human experiences. It defines our lives and modes of interaction, from our first contact with our parents to the way we continue to show love to one another. As we navigate a world where contact becomes a risk to safety, touch is now more intimate. Perhaps, through our creativity, we can find ways to reach out to one another, affect our emotions, and maybe even add a touch of hope and joy to our lives.
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Awards are given in each genre–creative writing, photography and art–for the following categories: students and residents; health care providers and faculty; patients; family members and staff. Additionally, we are awarding three prizes, one for each genre, recognizing work that best exemplifies the theme, “Touch.”
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The first edition of this book (co-authored with Rebecca Volpe, PhD, in 2013) was awarded the prestigious American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year award. The book reached a wide audience of nurses, especially managers and administrators who address issues of relational aggression every day. Consequently, the publishers requested an updated edition. Toxic Nursing, 2nd edition, contains new content on Title IX, discriminatory practices, and the pervasive use of social media in the nursing workplace.
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In the book, nurse experts from around the world contribute their expertise in addressing common relational problems in the workplace. Current references, follow-up activities, and discussion questions are included for each chapter and the Appendices offer other resources, such as screening tools.
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Most impressive, says Dellasega, were the efforts of her publishing team at Sigma Theta Tau International to get the book to readers early in 2021. “That meant a lot of weekend and late night emails and calls,” she says. “But I’m already receiving positive feedback from nurses who have read the second edition and it’s good to know it’s a helpful guide for all nurses. COVID has posed a major relational challenge for nurses, so a book that offers practical advice from expert nurse colleagues on how to address the challenges is really important now.”
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Diversity Update
Ampliando la protección para los niños
“Expanding Protection for Children”
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Mandated reporters in Pennsylvania whose first language is Spanish will soon have access to state-approved mandated-reporter training and professional development credits through a Spanish version of iLookOut for Child Abuse’s Core Training, developed by Benjamin Levi, MD, PhD, a professor in the Departments of Humanities and Pediatrics, and the iLookOut team.
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Developed as part of an NIH-funded study, iLookOut’s Core Training has been shown in several randomized clinical trials to improve people’s knowledge and attitudes about child abuse and reporting. Another Spanish version of the core training will be made available in fall 2022 to Head Start programs in all 50 states and U.S. Territories.
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Center Stage Welcomes Art Therapist, Betsy Fallat, MA, ATR-P
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Center Stage Arts in Health has expanded art therapy services by hiring an additional art therapist, Betsy Fallat, MA, ATR-P. She joined the team in November to offer services to patients in the Children’s Hospital and the Penn State Cancer Institute.
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Art therapy supports and improves patient well-being and was started at the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in 2018. Alexis Lombardo, MA, ATR-P, developed the program under the auspices of Center Stage Arts in Health. Art therapy allows patients to convey painful, confusing, and contradictory experiences of illness that are hard to communicate with words alone. While its central purpose is making meaning of difficult experiences in one’s life by providing opportunities for emotional expression, art therapy can also support developmental milestones and any physical needs or limitations of the patient.
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The art therapy program is supported by The Children's Miracle Network, Four Diamonds Fund and the Penn State Cancer Institute. Services are offered by referral.
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Honorifics
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Baron Award
Claire de Boer, MS, accepted the Baron Award in the Manager/Supervisor category in October. The annual Steven and Sharon Baron Leadership Award, established in 2005, recognizes employees of the medical center and College of Medicine who have demonstrated exceptional professional achievement and have exemplified cooperation and teamwork with others.
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“Claire has been a driver for advancing inclusion in the arts throughout our health system, with the most successful example being the diverse art displayed at the new Hampden Medical Center,” said Lynette Chappell-Williams, Penn State Health vice-president and chief diversity officer. “She has been unapologetic in expanding the awareness of our community in the intersectionality of art and diversity.”
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Her nomination noted that “Claire’s passion for using the healing power of art, music, and creativity transforms the healthcare experience. She works to create a calming and soothing environment through the arts. Her commitment to leading her team to seek artists who represent diversity fosters a welcoming atmosphere for our entire community.”
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Clouser Award
Four students at Penn State College of Medicine accepted the 2021 K. Danner Clouser Student Research Endowment Award for research projects within medical humanities. They are:
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- Stephanie Golub, Yoga Therapy in the Treatment of PTSD
- Kate Levenberg, Bare Souls Paintings
- Zahra Zhu, Lively Tunes
- Haorui Sun, Colorism in Medicine
The K. Danner Clouser Student Research Endowment is designed to provide financial assistance to medical students while they engage in research in the medical humanities. The research acts as part of their progress toward the MD degree.
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Clouser was University Professor of Humanities (Philosophy) at Penn State College of Medicine, where he taught medical ethics and philosophy of medicine from 1968 until his retirement in 1996. He was instrumental in building the first Humanities Department ever established at any medical school and was a pioneer in the newly emerging field of bioethics.
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Talhelm named inaugural Center Stage Arts in Health
Art Champion of the Year
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Lauren Talhelm holds the print she selected as her prize,
“Afternoon in Hershey” by Center Stage artist Brienne Brown.
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Center Stage Arts in Health recently presented Lauren Talhelm of Penn State College of Medicine’s Graduate Medical Education (GME) Office with its inaugural “Art Champion of the Year” award.
Among her work with Center Stage, Talhelm brought in live music for a GME event, scheduled an “Art for Wellness” workshop, and helped distribute art kits provided by Center Stage. Talhelm also shared “Weekly Wellness Highlights,” monthly music schedules, and featured programs in the GME Wellness newsletter.
Dozens of employees throughout Penn State Health serve as Art Champions for their departments. In partnership with Center Stage Arts in Health, Art Champions share wellness projects with patients and coworkers.
“We thank Lauren for emotionally supporting her coworkers through the arts engagements offered by Center Stage this year and greatly appreciate her partnership,” said Claire de Boer, director, Center Stage Arts in Health.
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Upcoming Events
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Book Club: Connecting Through Literature, discussions Jan.12, 2022, Feb. 9, 2022, March 9, 2022, April 13, 2022, May 11, 2022. CE credits available. For book titles and more information, email sdaugherty@pennstatehealth.psu.edu or visit the Connecting Through Literature Book Club webpage.
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Deadline for Wild Onions submissions Jan. 15, 2022. For more info or to submit your creative writing, artwork or photography visit sites.psu.edu/wildonions.
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Grand Rounds Lecture: Improv for Health Professionals Workshop: The Science of Teaching the Art of Medicine Jan. 19, 2022 • noon-1:30 p.m. Presented by: Amy Zelenski, PhD, via Zoom. For more info visit us on the web..
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Black History Month and Grand Rounds Lecture: Black Families and Mindfulness: Considering an Afrocentric Approach, Feb. 3, 2022 • noon-1:00 p.m. Presented by: Kesha Morant-Williams, PhD. For more info visit us on the web.
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Hershey Lecture in Medical History, "Cured," Documentary Film and Panel Discussion March 30, 2022 12-1:30 p.m. via zoom. More details will be made available on our website as we get closer to the event.
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Stay tuned for more details on the Hershey Lecture in Medical History, presented by Leslie Reagan, PhD, University of Illinois (History and Gender and Women’s Studies), in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine exhibit on rubella. Check our website often for updates.
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Wild Onions Premiere Event: Tuesday, April 26, 2022 5-7 p.m. University Conference Center (pending COVID-19 restrictions).
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*Some images in this newsletter were obtained prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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