At the intersection of medicine and literature…

A blog associated with the NYU School of Medicine is worth some free time, if you can spare it: Literature, Arts & Medicine.
From an entry on the literature written by nurses:

…As I see more and more narrative medicine courses offered to medical students, I wonder why many nursing programs still fail to utilize the creative writing of nurses-why not narrative nursing courses? After reading Dr. Long’s blog, I asked my husband, a physician, why he thought nurse writers were not as well respected (and as widely read) as doctors who wrote. His answer was immediate: “Authority,” he said. “People think that because doctors have more authority in the work place, they also have more authority on the page.” There is certainly some truth in this, as Long points out. Doctors are often seen as the embodiment of strength and “curing” and nurses, whether male or female, are often seen as the embodiment of a softer, more feminine “caring”-and I think there are other factors at work here as well.