Archive for March, 2011

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Narrative Medicine

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

After Rachel Adams’s son was born with Down Syndrome, she became very familiar with hospitals. With attentive care, her son’s health remains good. But she’s noticed how doctors tend to treat the problem in front of them without considering the patient’s larger story. She writes that they fix his tear ducts yet never ask how he’s doing in school or how the family is coping with his treatment.

Rachel Adams is also a Professor of English. She sees an opportunity both to make her discipline more relevant and to increase the quality of patient care by infusing medical practice with humanistic values. By writing and reflecting on their patients, doctors will come to see them as characters in a larger drama. By reading novels, they will become more compassionate listeners.

Columbia already has a program in narrative medicine. It may sound like just one more task for busy clinicians to incorporate, but the theory is that reading and writing will ultimately save them time and improve patient care.

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The Case for Diversity

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

When it comes to diversifying the faculty, one of the common arguments is that departments must choose between excellence and underrepresented minorities. As a powerful column by a university provost makes the case that this a false choice.

Yes, there are a limited number of open faculty positions and so offering a job to one person requires shutting out another. But diversity should not be a consideration solely at the point of hiring. Concern for attracting a broad applicant pool needs to begin before the job description is even posted. It needs to come into play when considering where to advertise, how to train search committees on unconscious bias, and how to interview candidates.

Then, once the most representative pool of candidates is assembled, departments should hire the best person for the position. Achieving diversity is not desirable for its own sake. Rather, it advances the educational mission of any university.

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Sentence by Sentence

Monday, March 7th, 2011

A new book by Stanley Fish exalts the sentence. Fish, who is a literary theorist, academic dean, and New York Times columnist, argues that writers must love language. They must treat their prose as a craft, constructing it as carefully as a sculptor. For writers, the sentence is their clay. It is the elemental building block by which meaning gets conveyed.

One review of the book contrasts its encouragement of creativity with the more prescriptive writing guide, The Elements of Style. Students can often benefit from the pithy rules and an emphasis on clarity that The Elements of Style provides. Fish's argument seems more suitable for the experienced writer. He recommends reading master author's sentences closely and importing their rhetorical tricks.

Even formulaic academic writing can benefit from varied sentence length and structure. In the end, all scholarship aims to convince its readers of a certain point. Language is the primary tool we have to persuade.

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Parental Leave

Friday, March 4th, 2011

Moms Rising is an advocacy group that promotes more family-friendly policies. Their site contains some sobering statistics about balancing childrearing and working in the United States.

  • 51% of new mothers lack any paid leave -- so some take unpaid leave, some quit, some even lose their jobs.
  • The U.S is one of only 4 countries that doesn't require paid leave for new mothers -- the others are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho.
  • Paid family leave has been shown to reduce infant mortality by as much as 20% (and the U.S. ranks a low 37th of all countries in infant mortality).

I've been researching parental leave policies for faculty at Boston University and Boston Medical Center. Female faculty here at least have the benefit of six or eight weeks of paid leave after childbirth, but additional time off is unpaid or taken from vacation or sick leave.

In the talk about work/life balance, the onus always seems to be on the individual to become more adept at juggling commitments. Some of the hurdles, however, are structural, and only changes in institutional policies can make it easier for workers to have fulfilling professional and personal lives.

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