The goal of the inaugural Duke Anesthesiology Healing for Healers Symposium is to provide Duke Health clinicians with an immersive symposium experience that can combat the depersonalization pervasive in modern medicine towards rediscovery of one’s purpose. There is growing evidence that supports the introduction of humanities-based approaches into health care as a means of healing and rediscovery. The use of art will allow participants to express aspects of their personhood often difficult to articulate in everyday language. In doing so, this symposium will also focus on promoting a holistic approach that aligns personal and professional goals with emphasis on incorporating physical, mental, and emotional well-being through the tools of narrative medicine, restorative justice, and humanism towards healing. Moreover, unbeknownst tomany, physicians take part in medical humanities exercises daily as storytelling is the bloodline of health care. In medicine, we tell stories every day. Formally, in a language and format embedded into the mind’s speech centers from the first days of medical school to informal decompression moments with colleagues. Thus, this symposium would awaken this muscle through the use of expert facilitators to guide attendees through individual and group exercises that all offer introspection toward one’s professional identity by revealing how the art of storytelling can be used as a springboard to navigate purpose. Each attendee will craft a personal mission statement.

Target Audience

• Allied Health Professionals
• Nurses
• Nurse Practitioners
• Physicians
• Physician Assistants

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of the symposium, you will be able to:

1. Identify personal and professional narratives to identify sources of meaning, purpose, and alignment within one’s medical practice.
2. Analyze the role of storytelling, art, and reflective writing in supporting physician well-being, empathy, and professional identity formation.
3. Apply humanities-based practices to develop one’s personal mission statement.

What is Included

• Free Registration
• Breakfast and Lunch
• AMA PRA Category 3.5 Credits, ANCC, Attendance, IACET CEU, JA Credit - AH

Adjoa Boateng Evans, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology
Department of Anesthesiology
Duke University School of Medicine

Dr. Adjoa Boateng Evans is an anesthesiologist, intensive care physician, mother, speaker, and writer whose work bridges medicine and the humanities to restore humanism in health care. A Yale graduate in the History of Science and Medicine, she also trained in anesthesiology at Yale New Haven Hospital and completed a critical care fellowship at Stanford, where she was recruited to join the faculty, ultimately serving as course director for the MS3/MS4 medical humanities course. Now as anesthesiology faculty at the Duke School of Medicine, she continues her clinical work in the operating room and intensive care units, while teaching and serving in the medical school and as a faculty associate at the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. Her scholarship and teaching explore the vulnerability at the end of life, the intersection of joy and suffering, and the "Prophesy of Pain" in medicine. A sought-after speaker and writer, she has been featured on NPR, TEDx, the Doctor’s Art Podcast, and is a regular Medscape contributor. Watch her TEDx Talk here. Read her Faculty Spotlight in the 2025 edition of BluePrint.

Rimma Osipov, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Department of Medicine
UNC School of Medicine

Dr. Rimma Osipov received her PhD in the Medical Humanities with a primary focus in the history of medicine and secondary concentrations in literature and medicine and clinical ethics. In addition to her clinical role as a night hospitalist at UNC, she teaches in the medical school social medicine curriculum and is working on several projects in medical education and clinical ethics. She organizes an annual conference series on ethics and humanities for the internal medicine residency and is collaborating on a project focused on building clinical reasoning skills among IM medical residents through the humanities. She serves as one of the lead ethics consultants for the hospital ethics committee and leads structured electives for residents in narrative medicine as well as in clinical ethics. Within the history of medicine, her interests focus on the impact of international medical graduates on the US health care system over the course of the 20th century. She has also recently presented on burnout and moral injury of health care workers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Terrence Holt, MD, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Social Medicine
UNC School of Medicine

Dr. Terrence Holt works at the intersection of medicine and literature, with a particular focus on medical autobiography and the ethical and imaginative power of narrative to shape how we understand illness, identity, and care. Trained in the humanities with an MFA in fiction and a PhD in 19th century British literature from Cornell, Dr. Holt writes primarily short fiction and personal essays that explore mortality, consciousness in language, and how stories can both cultivate empathy and reinforce harmful myths, especially in the context of clinical practice. Much of this work adopts the perspective of a medical practitioner to examine the limits of healing, the moral complexity of caregiving, and the ways patient encounters reshape the physician’s sense of self. Dr. Holt’s essays and criticism have appeared in venues including The New Republic and Men’s Health, and their scholarship and teaching in narrative medicine center on physicians’ autobiographical writing and on guiding medical students in reflective, autobiographical narrative through workshops and interdisciplinary training in medicine and literature.

This is a preliminary agenda and subject to change.

Joint Accreditation Statement

In support of improving patient care, the Duke University Health System Department of Clinical Education and Professional Development is accredited by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), to provide continuing education for the health care team.

Provider Statement

Directly provided by the Duke University Health System Department of Clinical Education and Professional Development.

Education Credits

Category 1: Duke University Health System Department of Clinical Education and Professional Development designates this CE activity for a maximum of 3.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

• 3.50 ANCC
• 3.50 Attendance
• 0.35 IACET CEU
• 3.50 JA Credit - AH

Resolution of Conflicts of Interest

Duke University Health System Clinical Education and Professional Development has implemented a process to resolve any potential conflicts of interest for each continuing education activity in order to help ensure content objectivity, independence, fair balance, and the content that is aligned with the interest of the public.

Disclosure Statement

It is the policy of the Duke University Health System Clinical Education and Professional Development to require the disclosure of anyone who is in a position to control the content of an educational activity. All relevant financial relationships with any commercial interests and/or manufacturers must be disclosed to participants at the beginning of each activity.

Disclaimer

The information provided at this CME activity is for continuing medical education purposes only and is not meant to substitute the independent medical judgment of a physician relative to diagnostic and treatment options of a specific patient’s medical condition.

Special Needs

The Duke University School of Medicine’s Department of Anesthesiology is committed to making its activities accessible to all individuals. If any participant in this educational activity is in need of accommodations, please do not hesitate to notify us by phone or email in order to receive service.

The information provided at this educational activity is for continuing medical education purposes only. It is meant for the sole use of persons intending to enhance their knowledge and understanding of advanced airway management and is NOT meant to substitute the independent medical judgment of a physician relative to diagnostic and treatment options of a specific patient’s medical condition.