Laurel Braitman’s annual overnight storytelling retreat for clinical students at Soulfood Farm in Vacaville, CA.

Work At Stanford School of Medicine

As the Director of Writing and Storytelling at the Stanford School of Medicine’s Medical Humanities and the Arts Program, Laurel teaches clinical students, physician-faculty and staff how to communicate more authentically, effectively and meaningfully with themselves, their patients and one another.

Courses

  • This course is an intensive workshop for clinical students devoted to oral and written communication skills. Participants receive instruction in the art and craft of storytelling for a variety of media from radio/podcast to print media. Topics covered: methods for constructive self-editing; the art of interviewing; pitching creative work to agents and editors; writing craft for narrative nonfiction and personal essay; negotiating consent with subjects; communication about difficult topics; best practices for science and medical communication; slide design for impactful presentation and best practices for public speaking and live storytelling. The workshops are held off-campus at local farms and feature Laurel’s invited guests. Previous guests include #1 NYT nonfiction author Rebecca Skloot (author of the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) to prize-winning fiction writer Jonathan Escoffery (GrubStreet) and Pat Walters (RadioLab).  Enrollment limited to 45.

  • Laurel works with many students and faculty on a one-to-one basis as a mentor on all aspects of writing, reporting, interviewing, journalistic and creative research, journalistic ethics, pitching, publishing, and editing. Clinical students can sign up for independent study on a quarterly basis or apply with a writing project to the Medscholars Program. Past students have done multi-year investigative reporting projects on everything from the criminalization of substance abuse disorder to community-based palliative medicine and right-to-die efforts. Her students have published in both academic and popular media and in a variety of forms–from fiction to poetry to opinion to longform creative nonfiction. Students she has mentored have received book contracts with top publishers, made the NYT bestseller list, and otherwise published in a variety of media.

  • In this spring quarter class students practice making their own writing more evocative, compelling, interesting and urgent. We cover topics from narrative structure to pitching agents and editors. All forms of writing are welcome from poetry to personal essay to science fiction to opinion pieces. Past students have gone on to publish books, radio stories, and much, much more.

  • This is an individual directed reading course intended for students who have an interest and specific focus in the medical humanities. Students develop their own syllabus with Laurel’s oversight and meet biweekly, one on one, with Laurel to discuss their reading and written responses. Their writing can take the form of fiction, non fiction or other prose. Previous students have focused on exploring longform nonfiction about medicine and public health, the reading and writing of poetry about illness and the body, and popular science writing about matters of public health, among many other topics. text goes here

Writing and Storytelling Programming

  • TalkRX

    Talk Rx is a live storytelling series established in 2017 at Stanford University School of Medicine by then medical student, Pablo Romano, and Medicine and tDirector of Writing and Storytelling, Laurel Braitman PhD. Speakers tell stories live onstage about everything from coming out to conservative parents to #MeToo in medical training, living with traumatic brain injury and mental illness, to winning geography bees, overcoming homelessness, dating in medical school, the death of parents, domestic violence, and much, much more. It has been an important space for students to embrace and honor all parts of themselves, not just those dedicated to medical.

  • Story Rounds

    Story Rounds was a live storytelling program at Stanford Medicine where Laurel coached physician faculty on story editing and public speaking skills to help them share personal stories about their professional challenges, emotional struggles, and mental health experiences. The program is part of a broader wellness initiative at Stanford, reflecting concerns about physician burnout and attrition, and is designed to help medical professionals process difficult experiences and build supportive communities.​

  • Writing and Publishing Rx

    Writing and Publishing Rx is an interactive discussion series hosted by the Stanford School of Medicine’s Medical Humanities and the Arts Program, and Director of Writing and Storytelling, Dr. Laurel Braitman, New York Times bestselling author. In this series, we’ll provide practical tips and techniques for improving your work and sharing it with broad public audiences–whether you’re interested in fiction, narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, poetry, radio/podcasts, or other forms of storytelling about health, medicine, and beyond. You’ll have the opportunity to submit questions before and during the conversations, as well as to write in response to prompts inspired by our guest author’s work and insights. Sessions will be recorded for those unable to attend in real time.

  • Other Workshops

    Laurel frequently leads writing and communications workshops for nearly a dozen different departments and groups at Stanford Medicine, such as the Medical Humanities and the Arts Summer Scholar Program, the Storytelling in Medicine Didactics for the Palliative Care Fellows Workshop, the Advanced Practice Provider Wellness Committee Creative Writing Medicine Workshop.