Stanford Storytelling and Medicine Summer Scholar Program
JUNE 17 - AUGUST 9, 2024
A page that Gupta created for her final project, Up & Down. By Riya Gupta
Through a program of study that includes a rigorous combination of writing workshops, lectures, conversations with medical students and physicians who maintain an art practice, interdisciplinary study in multiple avenues of artistic expression, and intensive one-on-one work mentorship, our Summer Scholar Program offers gifted students an original and intensive opportunity to document, inquire, reflect and celebrate the complexities of our lives. All students will be mentored to create a high quality final project in the media of their choice.
Learn more about the Storytelling and Medicine Summer Scholar Program by checking out the brochure, exploring our unique world-class faculty, Laurel Braitman PhD, Animal Madness, Danielle Ofri MD, What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine, Lucy Kalanithi MD, When Breath Becomes Air, and learning about our Med Scholars Program for current medical students.
Applications are open! | Apply here
Application Deadline: April 17, 2024 (ROLLING ADMISSION)
Download brochure here | For more information, please visit the FAQ page.
Watch the Information Session here
Course Director: Lauren Edwards, MD
Dr. Lauren Edwards, MD believes that stories are the core of good medicine. She writes poetry and short stories inspired by the practice of medicine and was the recent recipient of the 2023 F. Sean Hodge Prize for Poetry in Medicine. She is a clinical assistant professor of medicine and internal medicine doctor who practices at Stanford Primary Care – Los Altos, where she is also the medical director. She is the course creator and director of “Creative Writing in Medicine” and “Narrative Oncology”, two curricula for Stanford internal medicine residents supporting physician well-being through writing. She is also the Program Director for the Stanford Medical Humanities Summer Scholars program and co-teaches “Storytelling in Medicine”, a Stanford sophomore seminar, and has published on narrative medicine and presented at regional and national meetings about Medical Humanities.
Stanford University’s two or eight-week hybrid program in Medical Humanities emphasizes study in creative expression — poetry, fiction, nonfiction, dance, visual art, podcasting, and more — that encourages students to explore through stories and lectures the complex influences of medicine, art, and the human experience.
The human experience finds its voice and understanding through the arts — both embodied and on the page — and in the complex and rapidly-changing landscape of healthcare. The Covid-19 pandemic has made opportunities to reflect, to tell diverse stories, and to share common humanity essential.
Isa Alvarez Morales was a Storytelling and Medicine Summer Scholar in 2023. Isa is currently completing her last semester of a two-year Postbacc Premed Program at Washington University in St. Louis and will be applying to medical school this upcoming cycle.
