ReMed Kicks-off with a successful first week
Last week, an innovative summer fellowship hosted by the Kenan Institute, Reimagine Medicine (ReMed), kicked-off its second year with an engaging and successful start. For rising juniors and seniors preparing for health professions, ReMed fosters the character, imagination, and practices needed to work effectively in contexts of human suffering. The curriculum uses graphic art, music, expressive writing, puppetry, embodiment, improvisation, and mindfulness to explore themes often ignored in traditional medical education.
The 18 ReMed Summer Fellows start each day with a group centering exercise followed by sessions in many disciplines, focused around the central metaphor of what happens “in the room” between doctor and patient. Week 1 emphasized “perceiving” (what & how we perceive and how we are perceived), in a series of sessions at the Nasher and Duke Gardens. The students also dived into non-traditional hospital shadowing experiences with Chaplains, Environmental Services, Hospice, Intensive Care Nursery, and Pediatric PT/OT, and built community during “family dinners” and debriefing sessions. Rising senior Leila Milanfar says of the program, “This is a really great program and I would like to continue learning in this way throughout med school, as well.”
A team of physicians, faculty, artists, and healers have collaborated to develop this enriching and diverse summer program; but also joining the team as mentors and helpers are two returning students (“Boomerangs”), Akeim George & Ali Sloan. Sloan describes week one as:
“Every member of the group brings something unique to the table and It’s just incredible to see everyone already learning from and supporting one another, whether it be in improv, mindfulness, expressive writing, or anything in between. This being my second time around, I find myself even more able to appreciate the opportunity, environment, and space that ReMed provides us to learn and grow as future medical professionals and, more importantly, as people. I’m so excited for everything to come over the next few weeks!”
The ReMed Summer Fellowship runs through June 14 and more information about the program is available at DukeReMed.org
Reimagine Medicine is a collaboration among the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine, Science and Society, Duke Divinity School: Theology, Medicine and Culture, and the FHI Health Humanities Lab.
