Summary: Writing as a physician or health care worker carries unique considerations and consequences. How much disclosure do we share about our internal processes and our own lives? Do we share stories about our patients, even if removing identifying information? How do we write about traumatic events without triggering reactions in the readers (or ourselves)? How do we market ourselves on social media and other platforms in a way that does not compromise our professional integrity? What does it look like to ask beta-readers to review our writing in an ethical way? These questions and more will be discussed in Dr. Gibson’s session.
Learning Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will
1. Debate the ethical issues related to self-disclosure and emotional content
2. Determine one’s comfort level in sharing patient stories
3. Create a path to publishing with integrity, from writing to editing to marketing
About the speaker: Dr. Christine Gibson is a board-certified family doctor (and likely lifestyle medicine by the time of the talk) who works in equity-denied communities. Her clinical work involves trauma therapy at an adult addiction clinic and in refugee care. She created a residency fellowship in Health Equity and wrote the book The Modern Trauma Toolkit (Hachette Book Group, 2023). She holds a Masters in Medical Education and a Doctorate in Transdisciplinary Studies. She writes award-winning poetry, short stories, and fiction as well as non-fiction. She has >130k on social media as TiktokTraumaDoc and is writing her next book as part historical fiction and half cli-fi.
