Hello, I’m Micah Hester, Chair of the College of Medicine’s Department of Medical Humanities & Bioethics, and as my department coordinates the award process we are celebrating today, I have the honor of welcoming you all to the Third Annual Ceremony for the Drs. Paulette and Jay Mehta Awards in Creative Writing. We are very glad to see all you here, and others online, to celebrate our colleagues whose creative efforts are to be honored today.

The Mehta Award arose from the generous endowment by the Drs. Mehta, both long-standing members of the UAMS faculty, Paulette in Hem/Onc and Jay in Cardiology. Both are outstanding clinicians who are moved to care deeply for their patients, in part because they care deeply about all aspects of the human condition. The Mehtas have long supported education, literature, creativity, and the community, and this award is but one example of how their interests have been manifested for the benefit of UAMS.

As with previous years, a call for entries went out during the fall of this academic year, and over 50 entries (divided into categories of poetry, creative non-fiction, and fiction) were submitted by a members of the UAMS community, members who represented several of our colleges, the med center, from students, staff, and faculty. A five-person review committee reviewed every entry. I would like to acknowledge their important efforts here: Holly Taylor in Quality Management, Lauren Bunch in the College of Medicine and the Department of Medical Humanities & Bioethics, and Angela Scott in the College of Medicine and the Department of Pediatrics. Further, we asked for expert help from outside UAMS, and Casey Kayser, associate professor at UA-Fayetteville’s English Department and Eliz Borne of the Central Arkansas Library System agreed to serve. Entries are submitted by email and then blinded for review. After several iterations of reading through the marvelous entries, the committee came to light upon one winner in each of the three literary categories. A little later we will have the good fortune of hearing experts from each of the winning entries, but right now, it is left for me to thank the many people who helped make this award possible from the review committee members to the Office of Institutional Advancement—and, of course, the Mehtas themselves.

The importance of creativity, critical thinking, crafting narratives, and artful approaches to health care should not be undervalued. Science makes no difference to the human race if it pays no attention to the human condition, and the humanities and arts are the disciplines in our academic and personal lives that provide the perspectives necessary to connect individuals with one another. To highlight the importance of the relationship of the humanities to our work at UAMS, we have invited our Provost, Stephanie Gardner, to say a few words. Dr. Gardner…

Thank, you Dr. Gardner. Again, these Awards are named for the two people who generously funded the endowment that will help fund these Awards now and into the future. I would, thus, like to invite Drs. Paulette & Jay Mehta to say a few words to us about their interests in providing this marvelous opportunity for UAMS.

Thank you so much, Paulette and Jay. Before turning to our informal time to eat and talk with one another, we want to highlight the wonderful work of the Award winners. Top prizes were awarded in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction (and several other pieces were identified for honorable mention).  The awards include a trophy and cash prize, and the winners are with us today. I shall introduce them each, in turn, and they have agreed to say a few words and read excerpts from their work, and their entire pieces will soon be published in UAMS’s own online literary journal, Medicine & Meaning.

The top prize in poetry was awarded to Haylee Shull (from Northwest Arkansas) for her piece, “The Orchard.”  Haylee, congratulations.

Thank you. Top prize in fiction goes to, “Hardly Working (Remotely),” by Reade Zodrow, who is also from Northwest.  Reade, well done.

Finally, top prize in creative nonfiction is by Brook Scalzo in the College of Nursing for her work “Cleft.”  Brook, congratulations.

Thank you, and thank you all for coming to today’s ceremony. The Mehta Award will be given out each year, and there seems no lack of brilliant creative writing here at UAMS. So, please, look for the announcement next fall requesting entries. Now, please, enjoy the reception.

Micah Hester, Ph.D., is the chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics in the College of Medicine at UAMS.

By Dr. Paulette Mehta

Transcript of speech presented at Mehta Creative Writing Awards Ceremony and Reception, April 2023. 

Thank you to Dr Stephanie Gardner for your kind words and Dr. Hester for organizing this celebration of creative writing. Thank you also to the winners of this award who will be honored and who will read part or all of their work today.

You, the winners of the award and others healthcare workers who write, follow a long and honorable tradition. In fact, some of the most famous writers of all time have been doctors perhaps because they (we) are present at the most intimate moments of life, from the moment of birth to the moment of death and everything in between. These distinguished writers include Anton Chekhov, the Russian physician who wrote some of the most famous short stories including Uncle Vanya; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Scottish physician who wrote Sherlock Holmes; and Michael Creighton, who wrote Jurassic Park. They also include Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Anthropologist on Mars, Awakenings, and many other amazing stories from his neurology practice. This list goes on and on to include some of the most illustrious authors.

Why do healthcare  professionals write when they already have so much to do? And what makes them so good at writing?

I believe there are as many reasons for doing so as there are healers who write. First, they write to make sense of and to honor their experiences. We are privy to the most intimate and the most catastrophic of a person’s life events and writing puts it in a perspective that enables us to cope with our inner reactions and emotions. It also allows us to share our experiences and to teach others about what we’re experiencing, whether others be our patients and families, our colleagues, our students, our friends.

Increasingly doctors and other healthcare workers are being trained to write their experiences as a way to build resilience and protect against burnout, stress, depression, and ultimately even deaths of desperation.

Storytelling and story listening are the essence of a healer’s life. Patients come to us with bodies to heal but also with stories to tell. Their stories need to be heard, understood, and addressed. Their stories extend  to their families, their community, and us. When we listen well; when we accept their story with honor, humility, and humanity; and when we help to resolve their stories – our patients do better.

This is what I believe. This is what Jay believes.

Because we believe this so strongly, we developed this Mehta Creative Writing Award which will continue indefinitely here at UAMS as one aspect of a growing arts-in-medicine cultural renaissance. 

We are grateful for the leaders at UAMS including Dr. Gardner and others who have made this program possible. We are grateful to everyone who submitted stories for this competition. And we congratulate the winners of the award. 

Today we will hear portions of their stories and take time to listen and honor them.  

But that’s not all.  

Although we will only hear portions of most of their stories today, we will publish all of their stories – in their entirety — in the summer edition of Medicine and Meaning, the literary journal of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Make sure to read these stories when they come out very soon. 

In the meantime, let’s listen to our winners’ stories.

Paulette Mehta, M.D., MPH, is professor emerita in internal medicine and hematology oncology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She is editor in chief of Medicine and Meaning and has published many poems and short stories relating to her practice.

By Stephanie Gardner, Pharm.D., Ed.D.
Provost and Chief Strategy Officer

Quite simply, I love to read.

I read for pleasure and to learn.

I also enjoy talking about what I read and currently belong to two book clubs — including the Provost’s Book Club that I started seven years ago. That book club promotes campus collegiality as we discuss books on topics related to academic medicine and higher education — from personal and professional development, to clinical care, education and research. 

Paulette and Jay Mehta have been avid participants in the Provost’s Book Club right from the start. I know we share a love of reading as well as of the arts. As a member of Team UAMS, I am grateful they have channeled their passions for the arts into the Medicine and Meaning UAMS literary journal, along with support to establish the Mehta Awards in Creative Writing on campus. 

These awards speak to a belief we share: that creativity and the arts do not only nourish our spirit and entertain us. The arts also cultivate lifelong learning; and they can guide us to becoming better health care providers, teachers and scientists.

As we find more ways to integrate the arts into health professions education — whether it’s the written word, visual art or music — I believe we are equipping our learners with a powerful tool to help them form deeper connections with patients, maintain joy in medicine and develop empathy and resiliency. 

The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) reinforced this idea in a 2020 report calling for more arts and humanities curriculum in medicine and medical education. The report noted that so far the 21st century has seen significant technological advancement in health care delivery, marked health disparities, civil unrest, unprecedented rates of physician burnout and suicide, and public health crises from the opioid epidemic to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Knowledge of and an affinity for the arts helps a health professional interweave their scientific training with traits like emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills, an understanding of social context, and improved wellbeing. This will better prepare them to meet these challenges as effective contributors to optimal patient outcomes and healthier communities.

Last year the Provost’s Book Club read In Shock, by Dr. Rana Awdish, a physician who suffered a catastrophic medical emergency seven months into her first pregnancy that resulted in the death of her unborn child and left her fighting for her own life. She survived, but was moved to share her journey due to multiple episodes during her treatment and subsequent return to work where she experienced a shocking callousness or lack of empathy by health providers or colleagues. 

She believes it is important for a health provider to acknowledge and empathize with a patient’s pain and experience. She contends that it is possible to do without depleting yourself or clouding professional judgment. 

She writes: “When we allow our human channels to remain open, we better understand emotion because we’ve bravely confronted our own. Only then we can see where we are needed and the spaces we must move to fill. Only then can we help each other pass through the storm intact. Only then can we understand the value of our presence in the storm.”

When we encourage our learners to read a story like this, we introduce them to examples of the moral choices and dilemmas they may encounter as clinicians in a way that strengthens empathy and allows reflection and productive discussion. We also are encouraging them to share their own ideas and experiences, much like Dr. Awdish did, so that we all may benefit from their creativity and perspective.

Using the arts as a medium for growth, emotion and the exchange of ideas goes right to the heart of humanity and of the spirit of the Mehta awards. 

Stephanie Gardner, Pharm.D., Ed.D., is the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Chief Strategy Officer at UAMS.