Dr. Charon: Crisis in Healthcare System
Dr. Charon is an internist and the Founder and Executive Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University.
We filmed with Dr. Charon at the Narrative Healthcare Symposium in North Carolina.
Watch this vignette to learn about the brewing crisis in healthcare before the coronavirus outbreak.
New Film Coming Soon : “Planet Prescription”
Healing Healers. Healing Communities.
“Planet Prescription” is a collaborative documentary film effort coming soon between filmmakers, healers, communities, nonprofit organizations, and visionaries to offer hopeful solutions for humanistic health care.
About The Film
Health care practitioners are human yet driven daily to endure and keep track of phenomena and experiences most humans don’t even see in a lifetime. We need to make this work sustainable because the world needs healers. Listening and storytelling help the crisis of burnout in today’s medical field to heal healers.
Health care practitioners are witnesses with a unique perspective. We need to support them in listening to people in need, connecting the dots impacts to our health, and informing representatives working to shape public policy. Listening and storytelling help healers connect science and stories to heal communities.
Over the past year, filming “Planet Prescription” took us around the Southeast: rural Tennessee, city of Atlanta, Georgia, suburbs of North Carolina. We listen to an epidemiologist, pulmonologist, intensive care unit nurse, cardiovascular surgeon, internist, immunologist, registered nurse health navigator, social worker, counselor, and pediatric pulmonologist. We follow healers where they work: at huge hospitals, community hospitals, an elementary school, a university wellness center, a doctor’s office in a suburban mini mall, a Southeast Narrative Healthcare Symposium, and a Mothers and Others for Clean Air Grand Rounds Training.
The COVID-19 crisis is brutally showing us how vulnerable we are to existential threats. There was a crisis before this crisis — the stress on our health care professionals. And, there is an unconnected pandemic sweeping the planet — health impacts from the climate change and air pollution loop. But, we have the prescription — creating health care systems grounded in science and stories now will heal healers and heal communities to ensure a healthier future for all.
