Using literature to teach about death and dying

Health professionals are frequently exposed to death. Literature provides an ideal medium for discussion with students and patients regarding their reactions to death. Clinician-writers speak from the privileged vantage point of having witnessed, during training and in practice, myriad responses of patients and their surviving loved ones to death and dying, This session draws on the presenter's 21 years of teaching literature and medicine and introduces short works of literature, suitable for educational and therapeutic venues, which eloquently describe the responses of clinician-authors and their fictional characters to death, in hopes of stimulating clinicians to read passages with their patients, and educators to use these selections in the classroom and on teaching rounds in order to promote introspection and facilitate discussion. Authors to be discussed include John Keats, Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams. Meditative analysis of these authors' perspectives can provide readers with valuable insights and may alter their outlook on life and death. Reading and discussion can increase clinicians' empathy and compassion for their dying patients and help them to acknowledge their own mortality and better prepare for their own deaths. A list of works and websites will be provided to assist those interested in furthering their own education and/or developing curricula.