From the Chair

Kamna Balhara, MD, MA, FACEP

The creativity, joy, and courage that define this section serve as a powerful antidote to the increasingly polarized, busy, and overwhelming world we inhabit. I am always awed at our members’ extraordinary talent, and, even more so, your willingness to share that talent with fellow members of the section, and with medicine at large. Consider the array of publications, art, and podcasts that populate our listserv, created by our very own section members – this work is a testament to your imagination, curiosity, introspection, and critical reflexivity. Consider, in turn, that this section has become a welcoming place where people are not only excited to share their accomplishments, but also to celebrate the accomplishments of others – the humanities, and the generosity of spirit of our members, enable this crucial form of community. The deeply insightful and vulnerable conversation that section members had with our very own Jay Baruch on the topic of his stellar anthology, “Tornado of Life,” is a clear demonstration of the benefits of this sense of community. The medical humanities serve integral functions for us all – providing individual sustenance, nurturing community and relationships across distances and differences, and scaffolding our attempts to better understand our world, to think about it critically, and, most importantly, to enhance it. I applaud and thank each and every one of you in your efforts to advocate for the humanities across our specialty, whether they consist of engaging with others in this section, teaching our learners, publishing your work, bringing empathy and narrativity to your clinical practice, or writing, creating, and reflecting for your own joy and fulfilment.

When you have a moment, please do take a moment to populate this spreadsheet with your endeavors, interests, and accomplishments in the humanities. Our hope is that this will not only give everyone’s work greater visibility, but will also highlight areas for future collaborations. We hope to be able to highlight our members’ areas of expertise and interests in some sort of public forum, potentially the section website. As more of us add our details to the spreadsheet, this could serve as a jumping-off point for establishing a speakers’ bureau or a centralized database of mentors for future generations of MedHum’ers in emergency medicine.

As we continue to work towards our goal of advancing medical humanities from the periphery of emergency medicine to an integral pillar of emergency medicine, I am thrilled to share that we’ve been making some exciting progress. A few months ago, we circulated a call for section members who wished to join a working group to compose a consensus paper on the necessity of the humanities for the specialty of emergency medicine. We had a robust response (a reflection of how invested our section members are), and this stellar coalition of members from across the country, in various stages of their careers, and with diverse interests in humanities disciplines, has already met twice to sketch out what this paper might look like. We look forward to circulating a draft to the section as we move forward.  

This is a pivotal time to be engaged in the humanities in emergency medicine. We are at a crossroads in emergency medicine where person-centered care and clinician well-being have converged with an urgent need to understand and dismantle the sources of inequities in health. TGo navigate this juncture, we must look to the transdisciplinary framework of the medical humanities to identify creative, empathetic, and thoughtful solutions to not only address the issues we face, but to truly flourish as emergency physicians. I am confident that this section will help propel the benefits of the medical humanities across our specialty.

Two reminders:

• Save the date for our section meeting at ACEP24 in Las Vegas: Sunday, September 29, 3:00-4:00 PM, Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Level 3, Banyan F, followed by the Section Crawl at 6:00 PM, Meeting Rooms Level 1 and 2.
• The 2024 Writing and Visual Arts Award contest will be opening soon! Get your pieces ready!