The role of imaginative literature in clinicians' professional lives. Towards a randomised controlled study.

Project Team:

Principal Investigator:

Professor Brian Hurwitz, King’s College London

Co-Investigators: 

Professor Anne Borsay, Swansea University

Professor Martyn Evans, Durham University

Professor Corinne Saunders, Durham University

Dr Neil Vickers, King’s College London

Professor Rolf Ahlzén, Karlstad University

Professor Adrian Renton, University of East London

Dr John Salinsky, London General Practitioner and Balint Society

Professor Anne Scott, Dublin City University

Dr David Stone, King’s College London

Dr Jamie Whitehead, King’s College London

Award Information:

A Science in Culture Theme Exploratory award enabled this project team to hold two interdisciplinary workshops to consider methodological obstacles to measuring the impact of collective literary study on clinicians’ professional lives. Participants including literary scholars, academic specialists and health practitioners took part in the study.

Two interdisciplinary workshops were held in May and June 2012 to consider methodological obstacles to measuring the impact of collective literary study on clinicians’ professional lives. The workshops were specifically interested in whether it would be possible to set up a controlled assessment to measure such impact. The participants included literary scholars, academic specialists in the health humanities from medicine and nursing, a trials methodologist, GPs, a hospital doctor, philosophers, as well as clinicians and physicians who teach literature as part of professional medical training.