MindReading and RCPI present a unique online event

Posted 9 March 2021

MindReading and RCPI present a unique online event which will explore how literature can help when we experience illness and how literature has reflected the unfortunate recurrence of pandemics throughout human history - ultimately examining how literature can improve communication and foster understanding between medical learners, healthcare providers and service users. The seminar will be held on Wednesday 10 March at 5.30pm. 

This online event brings together experts from psychiatry, philosophy and literature to think about humanities in teaching for clinicians, compassion in care and doctors' wellbeing, with a particular focus on how literature has reflected pandemics through history. We will ask questions about the role of literature as a point of therapeutic engagement in trying to understand our historic response to pandemics.

(opens in a new window)Register here. 

Speakers: 
Dr Muireann O'Cinneide, Researcher and Lecture in English at NUI Galway. She teaches literature of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, giving undergraduate courses in Victorian literature, literature of the Romantic period, and eighteenth-century novels and poetry. She will speak on the history of pandemics in literature.

Professor Jim Lucey, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin and a Consultant Psychiatrist at St. Patrick's University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. He will be sharing insights and reading from his new book, A Whole New Plan for Living: Achieving Balance and Wellness in a Changing World.

Dr Katherine Furman, Philosophy, Politics and Economics Lecturer at University of Liverpool. She will speak on the consolations of philosophy for physicians.

Professor Chris Fitzpatrick, who will be talking about his use of reading and creative writing as a tool both in practice and in reflection.

Harriet Wheelock, Keeper of Collections at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland Heritage Centre. Harriet will discuss #PauseForAPoem - an online project that sees doctors, healthcare professionals, academics and staff of RCPI read a piece of poetry that encourages people to pause and take a moment of calm within their day.

The panel will be followed by a Q&A, led by (opens in a new window)Dr Clare Hayes-Brady, Associate Professor in English at UCD and (opens in a new window)Dr Elizabeth Barrett, Associate Professor in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCD. 

The event will also serve as the launch of the podcast series MindReading: Experts in Conversation, with thanks to the Humanities Institute and RCPI Archives, which will be available through the RCPI Archives website after the event, with new episodes launching over the coming months, including episodes on vaccine hesitancy, dementia and eating disorders, as well as an episode focused on emerging voices in this area.