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To find meaning in medicine, physicians, medical students and health care providers in general may need to make opportunities or learn methods enabling them to look deeply into their experiences. For all of us, finding meaning in our work reveals deep personal feelings, connects us directly with our experiences and those of others, and helps us understand service as our contribution to the whole of the community. Telling stories is one way for reflection to occur. These stories may be personal ones from our own experiences, or they maybe stories of those who have touched or inspired us. Time spent in such conversation can be healing to all who listen. The Kellams' talk is two-pronged; first, using experiential information from their course taught with Dr. Connelly, "The Healer's Art"; and second, on meaning in medicine. The Kellams use some of their students' collective wisdom, poems and lists as evidence for the profound insights their course has nurtured, and they talk about the merits of the experiential model of learning. Ann Kellams, MD, and Bryce Kellams, MD, are community physicians. In 1992, while medical students at the University of California at San Francisco, they co-founded the first Healer's Art course with Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen. After medical school, they completed their residencies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After working in private practice in Winchester, Virginia, for over three years, they relocated to Charlottesville, Bryce's home town, in 2002. Ann Kellams is in private practice at Blue Ridge Pediatrics in Staunton, and Bryce is in private practice at Forest Lakes Medicine in Charlottesville. In 2003, they spearheaded the effort to bring the Healer's Art elective to the University of Virginia. The Kellams' talk is followed by the induction of members of the fourth-year medical school class into the Gold Humanism Honor Society . 2004's inductees:
Claire Kathleen Akin ? Shirin Nasima Ali ? Mary Blair Allison To find out more about the Gold Humanism Honor Society, you can follow this link to their web site.
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