Hi 

After practicing medicine for four years, I transitioned* into academia full-time and I am in the early phase of a teaching-focussed academic career. 

 

I have a strong interest in the intersection between the creative arts, medicine and communication skills and for some time now have used spoken word poetry to reflect creatively as part of my personal and professional development. 

 

I started writing poetry as a medical student. As a deep (over) thinker but external processor,  it helped me to process the challenging experiences I faced as a student as well as difficult patient encounters. This was quite separate to the formal reflections required as part of my degree programme. However, I found the creative space made for a more meaningful reflective experience. I found myself better able to explore my identity in the moment, and the emotional impact of the moment, and not simply the skills I used and how effective they were. 

 

Tentatively sharing my work, I found many people resonated with my words and found my work to be impactful. People began to ask about the process I used to develop my pieces, but I didn’t have one. I just did it. So wanting to make sense of the process myself, of how I got from experiencing a situation, to writing a spoken word poem about it, I developed a workshop, Poetic Reflection.

 

 The workshop exists to equip participants to write and share reflective pieces that utilise verbal and non-verbal communication skills to address the emotion of an experience and the person (you) in the experience. Along the way, I realised how spoken word poetry, both the performing and watching of it can greatly help to isolate the skills required of effective communication skills, so I incorporated that element into the workshop in a playful and engaging way.   

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*It was quite a long and painful process but the best thing I did - check out my blog post to find out more.