Nevada Humanities

The Nevada Program

In 2008, Nevada Humanities, in partnership with Renown Medical Center and the University of Nevada School of Medicine, began a Literature & Medicine pilot program. The success of this series led Nevada Humanities to become a full partner in the national Literature & Medicine program. The current plan is to continue the Renown/UNSOM program and then slowly expand to other northern Nevada hospitals, as well as facilities in southern and rural Nevada. Nevada Humanities believes that this program provides an opportunity for the humanities to serve the people of the state by improving of health care.

Literature & Medicine in Veterans Administration Hospitals

The National Endowment for the Humanities recently provided a major grant to extend Literature & Medicine to VA hospitals in fifteen states, including Nevada. Pilot programs in Maine and Vermont VA hospitals demonstrate that the impact of Literature & Medicine is very significant for the participants from VA facilities, where work and stress loads have been both changed and increased by the influx of severely wounded soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq, and where their patients often face particularly severe physical and psychological wounds. The Reno VA will participate in this program

The personal testimony of participants:

• "This is the best team building activity we've ever done."
  
• "These discussions have significantly reordered how I think about medicine."
  
• "The seminars helped foster communication across the hierarchy of medical culture, which was great and much needed."
  
• "Surgeons commune with nurses from our long-term care facility; secretaries speak with equal voice to administrators; laboratory technicians give their viewpoint to obstetricians. In short, [Literature & Medicine] has greatly improved communications among participating employees, and has also improved communications with patients."