Being Vulnerable: A Qualitative Inquiry of Physician Touch in Medical Education.

Purpose: Effective nonverbal communication is associated with empathic behavior and improved patient outcomes. Touch, as a form of nonverbal communication, is relatively unexplored in medical education. This study sought to gain in-depth insights into physicians' experiences communicating with touch and to examine how these insights could inform communication skills curricula.

How clinicians integrate humanism in their clinical workplace-'Just trying to put myself in their human being shoes'.

Introduction: Humanism has been identified as an important contributor to patient care and physician wellness; however, what humanism means in the context of medicine has been limited by opinion and a focus on personal characteristics. Our aim was to describe attitudes and behaviours that enable clinicians to integrate humanism within the clinical setting.

Methods: We conducted semi-structured individual interviews with ten clinical faculty to explore how they enact and experience humanism in patient care and clinical teaching.

Bringing a novel to practice: An interpretive study of reading a novel in an undergraduate nursing practicum course.

Novels are one humanities resource available to educators in health disciplines to support student reflection on their own professional practice and therapeutic relationships with patients. An interdisciplinary team, including nurses, a physician, and an English instructor, carried out an interpretive study of the use of a novel by clinical nursing instructors in an undergraduate practicum course. Students placed in assisted living or long term care facilities for the elderly were expected to read a contemporary work, Exit Lines, by Joan Barfoot, which is set in a comparable facility.

Listening with a narrative ear: Insights from a study of fall stories in older adults.

Objective: To determine the value of adding a patient narrative to the clinical assessment of falls in the elderly.

Design: Qualitative study of interviews.

Setting: A fall prevention clinic in Calgary, Alta.