Works-In-Progress with Dr. Tan Nyugen
Department: Center for Medical Humanities
Date and Time: February 25, 2015 | 12:00 PM-1:00 PMEvent Location: University club
Event Details
In an intimate gathering at the UC Irvine Faculty Club on Wednesday February 25, 2015 Dr. Tan Nyugen, professor of family medicine led an interactive discussion about alternative means of communication in medical care. According to Dr. Nyugen, through using poetry and art, he and the staff and medical students working at the Anaheim clinic have been able to make new connections with their patients and learn how their patients are experiencing their illnesses. For example, an obese, older, wheel-chair bound patient, may draw herself as a young, happy, dancing girl, humanizing herself for the doctors, and forcing them to look beyond her illness. A person who is unresponsive to poetry may dislike poetry, or may be undergoing serious depression. A patient who is facing cultural and linguistic boundaries in a relationship with his doctor, may feel more comfortable after experiencing poetry together in their own language. This event was attended by faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates from the Schools of Medicine, Arts, and Humanities, as well as the Program in Public Health. It was sponsored by the Medical Humanities Initiative, a program within the UCI Office of Academic Affairs.