Hospital Drive: Words, Sounds, Images

Issue 3 Table of Contents

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Issue 3 Feature:
THE SEVEN DOCTORS PROJECT

Introduction to the Project | 7 Doctors: Selections | 7 Doctors Contributors' Notes
 

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Issue 3 Feature: Introduction to the Project

In April 2008, at the Examined Life Conference, University of Iowa Carver School of Medicine, the editors of Hospital Drive encountered the Seven Doctors Project, an example of what can happen when writers commit themselves to the craft of writing: they become better writers. It also is an example of what can happen spontaneously between a writer and a doctor: a translation begins, a bridge that brings art and science together.

In this Issue 3 Feature we present a selection of works by the Seven Doctors Project participants and hope that you will enjoy them and be inspired by the uniqueness of the project itself. You'll find fiction and poetry and personal narrative and even the lyrics and accompanying audio file of a song. We wish the writers and project continued success.

Hospital Drive Editors

The Seven Doctors Project
University of Nebraska Medical Center

Doctors at the University of Nebraska Medical Center joined with writers from the Omaha area this year to collaborate on a creative writing project.  I encouraged seven physicians who work at the medical center to begin, sustain, or return to projects in creative writing (or the writing of music, in one case).  I was inspired by Dr. Molly O’Dell’s presence as a poetry student in the University of Nebraska MFA in Writing program, where I teach.  Professor Andrew Jameton of the medical center joined me in coordinating the project.  Seven local writers were mentors to individual doctors and helped lead the discussions during our eight weekly writing workshops in the spring of 2008.

As a group, we made an early decision to help each other craft publishable poems, stories, essays, and songs.  We also paused many times to acknowledge the various therapeutic effects of doing creative work as a community of learners.  The writers took the lead; the seven doctors, whose average age is 52, became apprentices—a role not entirely comfortable for many of them.

Through our group interactions and my interviews of the doctors, and while shadowing them at work, I was able to learn about the medical system quickly and to see results that showed the powerful effects of concentrated creative writing on the work and the lives of physicians.  We started the Seven Doctors Project II in Fall 2008.

The Seven Doctors Project is the core of my dissertation, which is in progress.  I’m grateful to Hospital Drive for publishing selections from some of the doctors and writers in our project.

Steve Langan
University of Nebraska Medical Center

smlangan@unmc.edu

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Seven Doctors Project: Selections

  Poetry
  Molly O'Dell: Indusium
  Debra Reilly: Gifts from Him
  Lindsey Baker: On Being Sick
  Denise Brady: Self no Self
  Todd Robinson: Memorial Hospital, Freemont, Nebraska
  Song & Lyrics
  Chuck Brown: In the Garden
  Story
  Rebecca Rotert: The Straits
  Lloyd Holm: Shattering of Bonds
  Essay
  William Lyons: On Starting Your Geriatrics Fellowship
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Seven Doctors Project: Contributor's Notes
 

Lindsey Anne Baker is an editor, reporter, and writer in Omaha, Nebraska, whose poems have appeared in The Nebraska Review, Left Facing Bird, and The Benefactor.

Denise Brady is an Omaha poet and fine printer who is executive director of the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City.

Chuck Brown is a songwriter and guitarist whose day job is in journalism and public relations, where he writes for UNMC Today, a publication of the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Lloyd Holm, a physician, is a full-time faculty member and Student Clerkship Director in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center at Omaha who brings 21 years of clinical experience to his teaching and writing.

Steve Langan is a poet who teaches in the University of Nebraska’s MFA in Writing program and is writing a PhD dissertation at the University of Nebraska that includes his work on the 7 Doctors project. 

William Lyons is a geriatrician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center with particular interests in hospital care of elders, facilitating decision-making near the end of life, and medical education.

Molly O'Dell is Medical Director of Healthier Communities for Alegent Health and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pediatrics & Public Health at University of Nebraska Medical Center.  She received an MFA from University of Nebraska MFA in Writing program.

Debra Reilly is a newly inspired poet who says she “won’t quit my day job as a reconstructive plastic surgeon who loves needle arts and music and being a newlywed wife.”

Todd Robinson teaches in the Writer's Workshop at the University of Nebraska—Omaha.

Rebecca Rotert writes and teaches in Omaha, Nebraska.

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