MindReading 2020: Programme announced

The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) is hosting MindReading, a medicine and humanities conference, on 3 April 2020. The conference will explore how literature can help when we experience illness, and how literature can improve communication and foster understanding between medical learners, healthcare providers, service users and family members.

This is a collaborative day that brings together writers, humanities scholars, clinicians and patient groups to think about humanities in teaching for clinicians, compassion in care and doctors’ wellbeing. This year the focus will be on adolescent health controversies. We will ask questions about the role of literature as a point of therapeutic engagement in caring for adolescents and young people.

Speakers include:

• Emilie Pine, award-winning author of Notes to Self and Associate Professor of Modern Drama at UCD, who will be reading from her work exploring adolescent experiences and identity
• Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan, Neurologist at University College London, award-winning author of It’s all in your Head, delivering the inaugural Corrigan Lecture on writing and humanities as a clinician
• Professor Femi Oyebode, Head of Department of Psychiatry at the University of Birmingham and an award-winning poet and author, discussing Language and Meaning in Medicine

There will be active ‘expert by experience’ involvement (with Bodywhys, Refocus and the Asthma Society of Ireland). Children’s Books Ireland will also feature on an expert panel.

The full programme and booking information can be found at
https://courses.rcpi.ie/product?catalog=MindReading2020

The MindReading Project
The MindReading collaboration brings together clinicians, patients and specialists in medical humanities to consider shared problems in medicine. The first MindReading conference was developed by Dr Elizabeth Barrett (UCD) and Dr Melissa Dickson (University of Birmingham) in 2017 and hosted at the LexIcon Library in Dublin. In 2018, it was hosted at the University of Birmingham, and in 2019 at St Anne’s College, Oxford. For further information visit literatureandmentalhealth.wordpress.com and follow the MindReading project on Twitter @lit4health