The Art of Wellness, University of Louisville

This longitudinal elective will focus on the intersection between physician wellness and the arts. The course will be highly individualized and will emphasize developing personal strategies to protect against future burnout and promote wellness through attention to body, mind and spirit. The foundation for the course lies in five required general sessions throughout the year that include faculty presentations of pertinent content, individual assessment of wellness, development of individual goals for the year, group reflection, and a final sharing of personal projects. General sessions will be enhanced by student assignment to specific tracks; each student will be required to select a mentor from a list of track leaders with expertise in an art. The student must contact the mentor on a monthly basis, meet quarterly with the mentor to address progress on individual goals (including a course project), and participate in an experience of their chosen "art" at least once each quarter. Experiences may occur individually or in a group setting as determined by the mentor and student. These may include attending art exhibits, live performances, readings by authors, and field trips with mentors. The elective will culminate with a final session in which students will present the product of their wellness experiences to one another and their mentors. Examples of tracks: Therapy and Patient Health ( music, art, expressive); Music and Physicians (attend, learn, appreciate, reflect, compose); Physician as Author (reading or writing poetry, screenplays, narratives); Physician as Painter; Physician as Photographer. By the end of the elective the student should be able to describe at least two way in which the arts promote physician wellness; explain protective personal factors that may prevent burnout, identify individual risk factors for burnout and the clinical signs of burnout; and demonstrate and cultivate specific practices to promote personal wellness and protect against future burnout. Elective only. This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.