Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2022
Poetry as a Healing Modality in Medicine: Current State and Common Structures for Implementation and Research.
In healthcare institutions across the country, the role of poetry continues to emerge within the liminal spaces between the medical humanities and clinical care. While the field of narrative medicine is well-developed generally, formal review of the state of poetry as a healing modality is limited. Poetry in the medical humanities literature has often been described by its indefinability as much as by its impact on healing. ⋯ Such isolation is a major restriction to the study and growth of Poetic Medicine. While it is not known with certitude, the number of Poetic Medicine programs in healthcare in the United States appears to be growing. In this paper, we propose an initial framework to define the role and impact of poetry in healthcare and then describe two different, well-established Poetic Medicine programs in the United States.