Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities

Throwback May

The research group (i e Advanced Study Group) working with Empathy and Compassion, which you read about in the previous blogpost, took an active part in than three major events during 2022. The first was a one-day (completely “sold-out”) conference with international guest-speakers on the theme: The Neuroscience of Empathy and Compassion. It took place on May the 4^th 2022 at Grand Hotel in Lund and was co-sponsored by Grace S. Sandblom’s Endowment and the Segerfalk Foundation.

Programme sheet for the conference The Neuroscience of Empathy and Compassion, pdf 1MB (Opens in new window)

The Segerfalk foundation organises the Neuroscience Day every year, traditionally held in May at the Medical Faculty in Lund. Martin Garwicz – a neuroscientist himself and part of the organising committee for the Neuroscience Day for years – saw an opportunity to add leverage and value and invited

Tania Singer, Social Neuroscience Lab, Max Planck Society, Berlin;
Christian Keysers, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam;
Ewelina Knapska, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw;
Ruth Feldman, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzlia;
Andreas Olsson, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm and
Olga Klimecki-Lenz, Eleonore-Trefftz Guest Professor, TU Dresden.

The conference The Neuroscience of Empathy and Compassion was an eye-opener for many of the about 100 participants, regardless of which faculty they came from. The Advanced Study Group regarded this conference not as the “Grand Finale” it was supposed to be (timewise), but rather some sort of starting event for continued research and collaboration.

The two following interdisciplinary workshops: “How the other person’s ethnicity affects your expression of empathy and compassion in healthcare and professional education”, and “Practices influencing empathy and compassion – contemplation, art, music, dance” are ample examples of continued – and developed research ideas and collaborations.

The Pufendorf Institute’s calendar on the workshop How the other person’s ethnicity affects your expression of empathy and compassion (In Swedish)

The Pufendorf Institute’s calendar on the workshop Practices influencing empathy and compassion

In May 2023, we follow up with yet another related event, where neuroscientist and professor Anil Seth discusses the mysteries of human consciousness. Again sponsored by Grace S. Sandblom’s Endowment and the Segerfalk Foundation. And yes, you guessed it, this event is sold-out too.

Beast machines, Dreamachines, and the mystery of consciousness | Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities (lu.se)

Read the excellent interview with Anil Seth mentioning ABBA, bad weather and Carl Linnaeus (“The Big Guy”) in one breath here . I particularly took this line to heart:

“Understanding how life works does not drain life of its beauty, it has added to it. Even though we do not fully understand what is going on with consciousness yet, the partial understanding that we do have encourages us to take consciousness less for granted.”

May 1, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Empathy and Compassion – a research theme

The Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities creates conditions for conducting, coordinating, and inspiring interdisciplinary research in the medical humanities. Our focus is on the good interpersonal relationship between patient and health care professionals.

The concepts of empathy and compassion are central by virtue of their importance to both the patient and the one(s) caring for him/her. By studying how empathy and compassion can be strengthened and how the impact of negative factors can be reduced, we intend to systematically build a clear national and international research profile.

During 2021 and 2022, we’ve pursued the research theme within a so called Advanced Study Group at the Pufendorf Institute at Lund University:

“Enhancing empathy and compassion in healthcare students and professionals”.

Relationships between individuals are the fabric of human civilization. The quality of relationships depends on empathy and compassion. These abilities are also crucial to professions and institutions that are foundational to modern society. In healthcare, compassionate care improves clinical outcomes for individual patients. Importantly, it also increases well-being of healthcare professionals and reduces their risk of burnout.

Compassion for the “other” is, in addition, a guarantor of equal healthcare for all. It would therefore be highly beneficial to individuals, professionals and society in general if empathy and compassion could be efficiently, reliably and meaningfully enhanced by training.

This is currently not the case. In fact, the complexity of empathy and compassion makes these concepts elusive even theoretically, and definitions and operationalisations across and within many studies are inconsistent. Our aim is to explore the conceptual and practical challenges associated with developing efficient, evidence-based tools to enhance empathy and compassion.

April 27, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Alumni – the untapped well of wisdom?

Since 2008, medical humanities has been included as an elective course at the medical programme at Lund University and as course elements and seminars in semesters 4, 6, 8 and 9. In my previous work-life, I remember how difficult it was to get the students to fill in course evaluations and when they did, they were often short, to the point and with focus on what could be done better next time (which is no bad thing).

With the course evaluations from the medical programme I met the opposite. Long text, filled with nothing but praise for the course leaders and what medical humanities meant for these students, most on the brink of becoming physicians. They seem to think that the elective course in medical humanities (the last course of the entire 5-year programme) is something of a “book of revelations”, and reminding them of why they wanted to be physicians in the first place.

We could just sit back and enjoy this, of course. Why alter something that clearly works well and has done over many years? Well. Imagine the research material these course evaluations make. Together with the lists of master thesis-subjects. And that feeling the students expressed in those evaluations – the feeling of deeper understanding both on themselves and their patients. Does it last over the years? Should we add/change something in the course to better correlate to the common-day-work-life the now physicians experience?

A big alumni-project started in autumn of 2022 – because we want to find the answers to the above questions (and more). Who to better tell us than our former students? As we speak, a questionnaire is hitting the e-mail-in-boxes, snail-mail-boxes and LinkedIn-messenger-boxes of hundreds of former medical students. Several of our staff are engaged in this project, which we hope also will include an alumni-meeting the autumn of 2023.

If you want to know more about our alumni-project, reach out to Christopher.Mathieu@soc.lu.se

April 23, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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And the award for best director goes to….

In November 2022 we at Birgit Rausing Centre för Medical Humanities saw an announcement:

“Do you know an inspiring leader and/or a good role model within the Medical faculty?”

We: Yes… we certainly do!

The question came from Future Faculty. Future Faculty is an organisation of researchers with a doctoral degree (PhD), who have not yet obtained a permanent/tenured position. The aim of Future Faculty is to improve the conditions for young researchers at the Faculty of Medicine and to promote development of a career system at all levels. And they award academic leaders within the Medical faculty with the Minerva Award.

So what did we do? We nominated Martin. Martin Garwicz, our very own centre director. Of course we did, he embodies all the criteria for the award: he is a good role model, who leads by example and raises the bar for academic integrity. He also stands (up) for academic values Honesty, Trust, Fairness, Respect, Responsibility, and Courage.

After a long and thorough nomination and vetting process including an external review committee, we are now finally in a position to reveal the happy news: Martin Garwicz is rewarded the Minerva Leadership Award!

Future Faculty’s Minerva award selection committee’s motivation for the choice is:

“Martin Garwicz is a remarkable and widely admired individual who excels as a leader, teacher, mentor, and colleague. He is appreciated for the openness and positive atmosphere he creates there, and the way he inspired others to do their best. His genuine commitment to fairness was reflected in treating diverse groups as equals and in making sure everyone at the table gets a say. Martin has successfully established a culture of openness and trans-faculty collaboration between researchers, earning the respect and trust of those around him. His embodiment of the core values promoted by the Minerva Leadership Award – honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage – is truly remarkable.”

For us, this is like the Oscars, only better!

March 22, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Medical humanities in the medical programme

The Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities has several ongoing educational assignments and is developing new courses at Lund University.

Since 2008, medical humanities has been included as an elective course at the medical programme at Lund University and as course elements and seminars in semesters 4, 6, 8 and 9. Medical students also have the opportunity to write essays and degree projects in medical humanities in semesters 5 and 10. The medical programme (and our educational initiatives) is given in Swedish and information about both the course and the programme is sadly only available in Swedish. The same goes for the overwhelming course evaluations our brilliant teachers have gotten over the years.

One of them – the pioneer – professor Anders Palm, you met before, here and we’ve also written about his fundamental value for Birgit Rausing Centre here.

The other one is our current co-centre-director, associate professor, Katarina Bernhardsson. She is the one planning the courses, administrating and counselling, leading course elements and introducing (guest) lecturers and supervisors. Let’s just say she’s basically in charge of everything. And the students love her for this and her never failing commitment to them and to her subject.

We often ask her to “do her thing” – rooted in what is called narratives in medicine – with other teachers at the Medical Faculty, with representatives outside academia (within healthcare mostly) and with interdisciplinary research groups, locally and nationally. The impact is immediate and almost tangible. If you ever wonder what medical humanities can do for you (and others), have Katarina come over and wonder no more.

And now we want to do research on past achievements. Katarina Bernhardsson, Anders Palm, Chistopher Mathieu, Lars Hagander and Alexander Tejera are all involved in a major alumni-project, hitting the in-boxes, mailboxes and LinkedIn-messenger-boxes of hundreds of former medical students as we speak.

March 14, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Education, Collaboration and Research

Academic staff at Lund University, and indeed at all Swedish universities, divide their time between three major assignments: Tasks within education, within research and collaboration with organisations outside academia. Collaboration also includes outreach to society, as for example various popular science activities.

The staff at Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities are no exception. They all started working at and with the Centre in late January 2022, little over a year ago. The researchers who work for us form the core of the Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities. Their respective backgrounds, academic or clinical, vary, and while they’re temporary and part-time employees at the Centre, they remain firmly anchored in their respective disciplines and departments. You can meet them all here.

With our plan of operations as reliable handrail, our staff have been delivering one activity after another – accompanied by additional suggestions on how to reach the overarching objectives.

What better way to describe what it is Birgit Centre for Medical Humanities is up to than to convey the projects our staff is currently working on?

When looking at the list of projects, it occurs to me how most of them intertwine education, research and collaboration. As well as showing off that true interdisciplinary approach we hold so very high at the Centre. This makes it difficult to put them into a certain order, so I won’t even try to put labels on anything – I’m going to let the projects and the ideas speak for themselves. Some of them will get more than one blogpost. This doesn’t necessarily make them more important than others, it’s just an attempt to go easy on our readers.

March 3, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Events

Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities is often hosts and/or co-hosts of various events. Some are academic conferences, others are open lectures or popular science-gatherings, some are interdisciplinary workshops… we compiled last years’ events here (partly in Swedish) and were amazed ourselves by the variety of entries! And 2023 is seemingly going to be yet another exciting year.

It’s no secret within the centre-management, that I absolutely detest organising events. It takes time, energy and the nitty-gritty-details can drive me mad. But when I stand there, together with my wonderful team, and see the venues fill up with curious people – well, it’s SO worth it.

This spring, we are going to organise a National network meeting, bringing together researchers from all over Sweden approaching the Medical Humanities together. We’re also inviting international speakers to Lund, adding international perspectives to our endeavours.

But to my utter delight and relief, not all events require my reluctant cooperation. Far from it. Our popular science events “Kunskapskrogen” (“Science pub”) always attract large audiences thanks to my colleagues at the Medical Faculty. And this years’ Bridging the Baltic: Medicine in the Baltic Sea Region symposium in Lund “Digital Health – interdisciplinary perspectives on trends and attitudes in the Baltic Sea region” is entirely run by other colleagues – within and outside the centre.

On our brand new website, you can see all events, from now on and onwards, and we truly hope you are able to come and join us!

February 9, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Modus operandi

How do you build a new interdisciplinary knowledge centre at a large, reputable university? Apart from the necessary foundations described here and here? How do you go from vision to action?

Our centre director, professor Martin Garwicz, was appointed almost two years ago and he gave an interview back then. That interview is still very much readable in its entirety. As is, indeed, our plan of operations, finalised in autumn 2021.

The slightly shorter version (also Martin’s):

The interdisciplinary approach to issues of science, education and societal engagement at Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities is reflected both in our long-term recruitment strategy and everyday operation.

Our philosophy and modus operandi, are to strive towards re-creating the university, in its etymological essence, as a collection of masters and students. In our interdisciplinary team of colleagues, each is a master of their own discipline, but also a student of a dozen of others.

We cannot carry out research, education and engage in societal outreach at the level stipulated by our statutes without enthusiastic contributions from others. Instead, we try to inspire, stimulate, facilitate, initiate and coordinate in dialogue, collaborations and co-creation with others – individuals as well as groups and organizations.

In this way, we want to be an interdisciplinary forum for anyone interested in scientific, educational or societal issues related to healthcare or healthcare professions.

January 15, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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May we present: A very special honoris causa

We’ve been occupied with professor Rita Charon this autumn and I’ve written about her here and here. She sent us her thoughts and recommendations just days after her visit in Lund and we still dwell on the content:

“I recognize that you have already exceeded the aspirations and accomplishments of many medical humanities programs in US and Nordic/European universities. Some features are conceptual, and some are very practical and concrete”

Not bad after just one year, eh?

“The fact that your director and co-director are a neuroscientist and a literary scholar is very telling. This feature will over time reap great harvest, for the creative ferment in the sciences feeds our ferment in the humanities.”

Martin Garwicz (director) and Katarina Bernhardsson (co-director) make a brilliant team, not only because of the above, but because they are who they are as individual scholars and leaders, and as the combined centre management. Read more about them (in Swedish) here: Medicinsk humaniora ger utrymme för nya tankesätt | Lunds universitet

“The projects the Fellows are undertaking are, almost without exception, substantive and collaborative and will have a real impact on the Centre’s and university’s actual work…”

I’ll get back to Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities’ golden staff, the 11 bright scholars from various disciplines – our fellows. They will, in time, present themselves, their actions and thoughts in this blog too.

“That the Vice Chancellor came to the Sandblom lecture and dinner means a whole lot. … Eric’s engagement signals an endorsement of this partnership and commitment to its growth.”

Yes, we have a dedicated Vice Chancellor at Lund University, Erik Renström, which means a lot to us, it really does!

Does it surprise you that we nominated this extraordinary person as an Honorary doctor at the Medical faculty at Lund University? A no-brainer, right? And that she was appointed? Clearly, no surprise there either. Read the announcement here.

So: Welcome back in May 2023, professor Charon!

November 30, 2022

Åsa Thormählen

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Professor Rita Charon delivers Philip Sandblom Prize Lecture 2022

And suddenly, Professor Rita Charon was in the room! And not in just any room. Our announcement of the lecture (below) lead to that the about 200 guests arrived a beautiful October afternoon and got a wonderful introduction of Rita Charon by BRCMHs own Katarina Bernhardsson, a lovely speech by Stefan Gautschi, the representative for Grace S Sandblom’s Endowment and a thought provoking, lecture by Rita Charon.

Read an interview with Rita Charon prior to the lecture here: Sandblom Prize: Expanding creativity in clinical worlds through narrative medicine | Faculty of Medicine, Lund University

And as the week proceeded, Rita Charon participated in the Nordic Network of Narratives in Medicine conference in Lund, hosted by Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities, met BRCMHs fellows, senior advisor, affiliates and centre management and gave another lecture to the students at the medical programme as well. If we weren’t star struck before, we sure were after this week – and also filled with advice for the future. We just wish we could ask her back soon again.

Our announcement “Creativity in Life: How Literature, Art, and Music Affect Illness and Health”

One of the international pioneers of the medical humanities, Professor Rita Charon, M.D., Ph.D. at

Columbia University School of Professional Studies, will receive the Philip Sandblom Prize on 4 October. Welcome to join both reception and an open lecture (in English): “Creativity in Life: How Literature, Art, and Music Affect Illness and Health” in LUX Auditorium at 16.15

Philip Sandblom Prize Lecture 2022 is sponsored by Grace S. Sandblom’s Endowment and Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities

What is it about?

Rita Charon will show, in words and pictures, how collaborative work in creative disciplines opens up readers and viewers to unique experiences of their embodied, subjective, relational selves—and of the embodied, subjective, relational selves of others. The title of the lecture is a play on words of Philip Sandblom’s influential book Creativity and Disease: How Illness Affects Literature, Art, and Music.

Philip Sandblom was professor of surgery at Lund University and was also the vice chancellor of Lund University during 1957-68. He had a great interest in the humanities and in modern art. In honour of his memory, his wife, Grace, created a fund to further stimulate students’ interest in medical humanities. The fund also gives annual support to prizes to distinguished lecturers in medical humanities.