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2017: Our Year in Review

Dear readers of Doctors Who Create,

Another year has passed by quickly, and we’ve been excited to share new content and ideas from writers around the world with you in this past year. We remain ever-thankful to you for being a part of the Doctors Who Create community. We rely on your feedback—your emails, your tweets and facebook posts, your conversations—to improve each year. I started this organization in 2015 in reaction to a thought in the back of my mind that had grown too persistent to ignore—the fact that the medical training process and culture often seemed to promote conformity instead of creativity. I felt that we needed visible role models and conversations to change that. That sparked the Doctors Who Create website, and in 2016 we were able to grow into a larger team, and publish more varied and interesting content. In 2017, we have expanded that team (who you can read about on our About page), published more guest posts by contributing writers, and started more partnerships with organizations that share similar goals. We have also made an effort to promote our mission at medical conferences.

Here are the highlights of our past year:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc6HIrYHheb/?taken-by=doctorswhocreate

https://twitter.com/doctorscreate/status/884774805655912449

  • I presented Doctors Who Create at the Hippocrates Poetry in Medicine symposium, a conference held this year at Harvard Medical School attended by physicians, poets, and poetry researchers from around the world. The symposium occurs annually and accepts poetry submissions here.
  • DWC artist Lizz Card took home the first prize at the Frank H. Netter Symposium on Arts and Health this year for her painting “Mahosot Surgery I.” Check out some of her contributions on DWC, including her unique brainstem cross-section squish paintings here (maybe the most creative way to appreciate neuroanatomy!)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaJfJ95nrSY/?taken-by=doctorswhocreate

  • We got an inside look at the Mütter Museum, founded in the mid-nineteenth century in Philadelphia and a hub for medical specimens, oddities, and art, when our staff writer Chieme Ohanele interviewed the museum educators about its role in educating the public on the intersection of art and medicine.
  • I presented Doctors Who Create at the medical innovation conference Stanford MedX in September. The conference was a unique mix of patients, providers, and designers: you can read my take on it here.

  • Our newest social media manager, psychiatry resident Jihan Ryu, has allowed us to expand our Instagram presence with the creation of quoteboxes highlighting the creative physicians we profile in our series “Profiles in Creativity.” Follow our Instagram account here to #getinspired !

With every post this year, I was inspired by the hard work that went behind it—from our daily dose editors Ekta and Chris, our Profiles in Creativity editors Eugenia and Esha, our arts editors Mike and Kathryn , our social media experts Ananya, Jihan, and Samantha, our writers, artists, podcast, and strategy team, our physician-advisor and my mentor Dr. Amy Waldner, and last but not least, our editor-in-chief Stephanie Woo, who spearheaded all of the work you see linked above with the help of our hardworking managing editor Lauren Kim. Every member of our team is passionate about our mission of promoting creativity in medicine, and carves out precious time to make it happen: I am so privileged to work in their company.

Thank you for joining us in celebrating all the creativity above this year. It’s tough making and keeping resolutions when the majority of our volunteer staff is immersed in medical training, but here are a few goals we have for 2018:

  • Getting our podcast off the ground! (Interested in helping out? Please contact me at vidya@doctorswhocreate.com if you have any sound editing or podcasting skills, we would love your help).
  • Starting a book review section for books by physicians.
  • Partnering with more organizations that share our mission.
  • Promoting our stories on other media outlets.
  • Growing our social media presence
  • Fundraising so that we can grow our staff, reach a larger audience, and hold events in the future.
  • Planning a Doctors Who Create conference, hopefully featuring many of the creative physicians we’ve profiled for our Profiles in Creativity series

Want to help us with any of our goals? Please email me at vidya@doctorswhocreate.com

Thanks for making it to the end of the year-in-review post! Tweet us (@doctorscreate) to let us know which piece of 2017 you enjoyed the most, and/or what DWC content you’d like to see in the new year!

Happy New Year!

Vidya

Founder and President, Doctors Who Create