Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care ® is a national award-winning reading and discussion program for health care professionals that, as one participant writes, “renews the heart and soul of health care.” Literature & Medicine discussions have helped health care professionals across the country improve their communication and interpersonal skills while increasing their cultural awareness, empathy for patients, and job satisfaction.

An innovative and cost-effective way to improve patient care, one hospital administrator summed up Literature & Medicine’s impact: “The reflection and conversation that takes place in the process greatly enhances the level of cooperation, collaboration, and esprit de corps within our hospital family and our community at large. The impetus in turn greatly improves the quality of care we provide to our patients and their families.”

Why is Literature & Medicine important in New Jersey? As our state’s population becomes increasingly diverse, healthcare workers can no longer rely on what they know from their own lives to understand their patients, who may be of a different religious, socio-economic or cultural background. Literature gives healthcare workers the opportunity to see through another person’s eyes while the group discussion format helps break down the hierarchies among doctors, nurses and administrative staff in the hospital that can impede care. 

By helping healthcare workers at all levels better understand their patients and each other, Literature & Medicine improves the quality of healthcare in New Jersey.

Since the program's inception in New Jersey in 2005, six hospitals have taken part in Literature & Medicine, with the VA hospital joining in 2010 as part of a federally funded grant. They are:

The Healthcare Foundation Center for Humanism and Medicine/UMDNJ-NJMS—Newark Mountainside Hospital—Montclair Overlook Hospital—Summit The Cancer Institute of New Jersey—New Brunswick Cooper University Hospital—Camden AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center—Atlantic City VA Healthcare New Jersey—Lyons/East Orange

Outcomes

Evaluations show uniformly positive results for all five goals of the program: increased empathy for patients, greater cultural awareness, improved interpersonal relations, better communication and more job satisfaction.  One participant remarked that Literature & Medicine has, “broadened my horizons to appreciate all the emotions/feelings involved in patient care and opened my eyes to other peoples’ points of view.”

Participants in New Jersey in 2008 reported a significant increase in:

              Empathy for patients       

              Cultural awareness

              Job satisfaction

              Interpersonal relations

              Communication     

For more information on this program and how your hospital or health care organization participate, please contact Mary Rizzo, Associate Director, at 888-394-6524; mrizzo@njch.org