For three years, Bryan R. Fine, MD, MPH, pediatric hospitalist at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., ran a creative writing elective for fourth-year medical students at George Washington University. Dr. Fine often writes during down time at work, especially on the night shift. He writes stories, nonfiction essays, and songs, which he performs publicly on occasion, including a few weeks each year at Club Med and other Caribbean locales.
Dr. Verbin has taken seminars in writing for children. “I’ve made some baby steps in that direction, but progress has been slow and mostly relegated to someday,’” she says.
In 1998, Dr. Grant left the University of Arizona, where he was practicing as a hospitalist for Cleo Hardin, MD, section chief of pediatric hospital medicine and herself a writer. (She is revising a memoir she wrote a couple years ago and beginning a novel about mothers and daughters). He traveled to Israel and Poland and wrote about that experience, then realized he wanted more. He returned to his school to pursue a master’s in creative writing. A year ago, at Dr. Hardin’s urging, he returned to medicine, now describing himself as a part-time hospitalist and full-time writer.
“I was overwhelmed by a lot of strange sensations when I went back to the hospital—all of which really informed my writing,” says Dr. Grant.
He is working on a memoir about leaving medicine after becoming uncomfortable with the ethical and personal dilemmas he faced as a pediatrician and as a father. “It’s hard to watch children die, but unbearable when you have children of your own,” he says.
Dr. Grant works nights, teaches medical students an elective in creative writing, and occasionally teaches at a community college. His most exciting teaching outlet is as an instructor in the Czech Republic at the prestigious Prague Summer Program, a study-abroad program offered through Western Michigan University. Those who take his the two-week memoir-writing workshop bring complete manuscripts for review and critique.
“The whole philosophy behind teaching writing and taking humanities classes is that there are unexplored areas of the brain that get withered as you go through medical school and residency,” Dr. Grant says. “Re-exploring that creative side allows us to become better physicians. Becoming more in touch with your own humanity allows you to be a more human practitioner, Even though I only practice part time, I’m certainly different as a practitioner than I was before [I started writing].”
As a full-time writer, Dr. Grant is the exception. But Dr. Nazario recalls a quote from physician Anton Chekhov that may sum things up for other hospitalist writers: “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other.” TH
Andrea Sattinger is a medical writer based in North Carolina.