Projects and Initiatives
Humanities Projects and Initiatives
The Department of Humanities pursues scholarship to advance knowledge, improve teaching and contribute to the community on local, national and international levels.
The department's innovative research includes topics such as graphic medicine; vaccination controversy; child abuse; end-of-life decision making; ethical, legal and social implications of genomic research; nursing and nurse relationships; Alzheimer’s and dementia care and experience; and professional identity formation among medical students.
The department is addressing race and social justice within medicine and biomedical research and seeks to transform care practices, pedagogy and institutional norms with humanistic perspectives on illness, medicine and health in the 21st century.
The Department of Humanities also reaches into the health care setting to improve patient and provider experience with programs focusing on compassion and empathy, often using arts and music.
Learn more about some of the department's initiatives and programs here.
Center Stage
Center Stage enhances the healthcare experience by showcasing art, music and creative writing that calms, nurtures and inspires. Through Center Stage, we seek ways to enhance the well-being of individuals who come through our doors, whether they are patients, caregivers, employees or students.
The Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine
The Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine is an endowment that supports projects and initiatives that promote compassion in healthcare settings. This work has flourished with the support of many departments and includes ambassadors from throughout the hospital, medical school and community.
Ethics Pocket Cards
The ethics consultation service at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center developed ethics pocket cards to summarize, in a clear and accessible manner, core knowledge about clinical ethics. We hope that these cards will be helpful not only to individual health professionals, but also to institutions who may wish to develop similar materials for their own use.
Graphic Narratives
Since 2009, fourth-year medical students at Penn State College of Medicine have created comics as part of a course called "Graphic Storytelling and Medical Narratives." The course was developed to show students how graphics and text can be used to effectively communicate complex medical narratives and to help students develop their own stories into graphic depictions.
The iLookOut Project
The iLookOut Project develops and evaluates interactive, gamified educational interventions to promote child well-being –particularly as it relates to child maltreatment and its consequences. These resources are designed to help those who engage with children and their families be more informed, reflective, and mindful –which includes promoting critical thinking to help counter implicit bias. Based on findings from NIH-sponsored randomized controlled trials and real-world studies, iLookOut’s mandated reporter training is the official such training for Head Start programs in all 50 states and U.S. Territories.
Physician Writers Group
Penn State Health's Physician Writers Group is a workshop for clinicians who are interested in creative writing for publication in professional medical journals, hosted by Dr. Kimberly Myers, who holds a doctorate in literature.
Wild Onions
Wild Onions is an annual journal of poetry, prose and visual art funded by The Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine. All works in Wild Onions are created by members of the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center community. Most entries pertain to some dimension of medicine, but submissions are welcomed on all topics.