WRCM 203 - Writing Medical Narratives

HC ARHU WINT

2 credits
This course will be structured around drafting the personal statement for a career in healthcare, a particularly challenging but surprisingly dynamic genre of writing. Crucial to crafting the personal statement is the “story” one tells; as an applicant, you are essentially telling thestory of how you arrived at the decision to pursue a career in medicine and healthcare. As such, the course will also focus on understanding how stories quite generally are structured and how they function. We will read medical narratives of fiction and nonfiction from writers such as Amy Hempel, Susanna Kaysen, Atul Gawande, Oliver Sacks, Leslie Jamison, Laura Hillenbrand, Anne Fadiman, among many others. Like the best healthcare providers, the best writers are empathetic towards their readers. In this way, writing and medicine share a common goal: human connection.