February 19, 2007
Jack Truten, Ph.D. has always been interested in the interconnections of
narrative and medicine. After his early RN career, Jack Truten took up
a position in the English Department at Lafayette College for sixteen
years where latterly, he developed successful interdisciplinary seminars
in Literature and Medicine and in Death and Dying. For 2005-2006, he
accepted the Anderson Fellowship in Clinical Ethics and Medical
humanities at the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, PA where his
particular interests and initiatives were in Faculty Development and in
Narrative Pediatrics, with a special focus on the alleviation of
Compassion Fatigue in clinicians routinely exposed to traumatized
patients and families.
Recently, he has undertaken specialist training in Narrative Medicine
and in Balint Group Leadership.
September 18, 2006
Rita Charon, M.D., Ph.D. is a general internist and Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University where she directs the Programs in Narrative Medicine, Humanities and Medicine, and the Clinical Skills Assessment Program. Dr. Charon graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1978, trained in internal medicine at the Residency Program in Social Medicine at Montefiore Hospital in New York, completed a year's fellowship in general internal medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in 1982, and has practiced general internal medicine since 1981 at Columbia. She received the Ph.D. in English at the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in 1999, having written her doctoral dissertation on the use of literary methods in understanding the texts and the work of medicine.
September 14, 2004
Chris Feudtner, MD PhD MPH, is a pediatrician at the University of
Pennsylvania and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who focuses on improving the lives of children with
complex chronic conditions (CCCs) and their families. His is an attending physician and director of research
for both the Pediatric Advance Care Team (which provides palliative, end-of-life, and bereavement services)
and the Integrated Care Service (which cares for hospitalized children with chronic conditions and
technology-dependent health care needs). As a historian of medicine, Chris recently published a work on the
history of diabetes in America, entitled Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Ill ness
(University of North Carolina Press, 2003). In the field of medical ethics, Chris has worked on understanding
medical student ethical development and on the interface of ethics and public health policy regarding
immunizations and the care of children with complex chronic conditions.
September 30, 2004
Rita Charon (See above)
March 28, 2005
Dr. Helen Conrad Davies was the first woman faculty member named to
Penn's Microbiology Department (1965), where she has been a full professor since 1982. From 1991-1995 she was
Penn Med School's Associate Dean for Student Affairs. She has received a Lifetime Mentor Award of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Focus Leadership Mentoring Program Award for Excellence
in Mentoring Faculty, and the Alice Evans Award of the American Society for Microbiology. Dr. Davies has also
received 22 major teaching awards for her commitment to innovative teaching of undergraduates and graduate
students. She sits on the Executive Board of the Penn Women's Center, helped form Women for Equal Opportunity
at Penn, and has served on the Executive Committee and the Committee on the Status of Women at Penn State
University. She is a founding member of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) and was its National President
in 1998-2000. She received her Ph.D. in Physical Biochemistry from Penn, her B.A. in Chemistry from Brooklyn
College, and her M.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Rochester.
April 11, 2005
Dr. Barry Bub - physician, psychotherapist, educator and author - is
a member of the AMA Physician Health Initiative Commitee. A family physician for almost 30 years, he trained in
Gestalt, psychotherapy, and chaplaincy and now innovates new concepts in holistic medicine. Dr. Bub teaches and
confidentially mentors physicians on issues of communication and self care. He has taught nationally for such
organizations as the American Psychiatric Association, AMA, AAPP, NICABM and at numerous hospitals, medical schools
and retreat centers. He is author of ProcessMedicine.com and Communication Skills that Heal (Radcliffe
Medical Press, 2005).
