For stressed-out Cleveland healthcare workers, creative writing can help

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Dr. Kevin Kawalec was in high school, he planned to study art. But the career of the watercolor painter would end up taking a much different path.

Today Kawalec practices family medicine at University Hospitals in Cleveland. He still paints, but he’s decided to try his hand at another type of creative expression: writing.

Writing is something Kawalec says he wanted to get better at, and to that end he’s joined a community of Cleveland-area doctors and healthcare professionals interested in honing the craft.

So, on a rainy Saturday morning at the end of March, Kawalec and about 10 other doctors, nurses and hospital staff convened around a table in an old brownstone building at Case Western Reserve University known as the Writer’s House. It was the introductory meeting of what would become a yet-to-be-named community of Cleveland healthcare professionals who are learning to express themselves– even cope with the unique stresses of a life in medicine — through writing.

Sustained by coffee, fruit and doughnuts, participants each created a unique fictional story based on the same one paragraph writing prompt, then traded it with a neighbor who read it aloud to the group.

Leading the discussion was Dr. Goutham Rao, division chief of Family Medicine at UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital and published author of several fiction and non-fiction books. Rao single-handedly organized the meeting, having put out a call to the Greater Cleveland medical community for anyone interested in becoming a better writer.

Although Rao says he’s partial to fiction, he says the type of writing doesn’t matter. Whether participants come for the purposes of improving their medical communications, for pushing creative boundaries into blogs, podcasts, and personal essays, or to find a safe supportive space to try their hand at their first novel, all are welcome.

The idea to form his own writers group came to him after he wrote and published his first fiction novel. He had attempted to join a group of physician writers at Stanford, but Rao says the group didn’t provide the sense of community he was looking for, nor was it designed to help people improve their writing skills.

“I thought, this isn’t working for me. We need to start our own group,” he said.

Although he had already written several non-fiction books, Rao started writing his first fiction novel, Rainy Day Comrades, during the pandemic while he and his fellow doctors were forced to work remotely.

Unlike fact-based writing that has to be precise, Rao says he found a sense of freedom in writing fiction. “When you’re writing fiction it’s liberating because you can make up your own story,” said Rao. He realized, “This is really cathartic for me; it’s a great way to relieve stress.”

That led him to wonder if others felt the same.

“And I thought, this is something I’m benefitting from, and I wanted other people to be able to experience, but they aren’t going to be able to experience it unless they have the skills to do it,” Rao said. “There’re so many unfinished novels out there.”

But while the execution of would-be novels might be lacking, the practice of medicine certainly provides no shortage of fodder for fiction.

Doctors meet people from all walks of life who serve as inspiration for fictional characters, and illness, death and the related human struggles provide ample opportunity for conflict resolution. But there are also power struggles, money, ego, politics and technology.

Rao’s first novel, a story of two men who illegally use private health information for financial gain, came from a conversation he once overheard in the IT department of a hospital where he used to work.

“I hear these two guys saying, ‘Hey look at this one, looks like this is a bad cancer or something,’ … and their supervisor said, ‘Oh yea, they do that all the time.’” Rao recalls.

“Doctors are very careful about disclosing private health information. We are taught not to do that, but the IT guys who can look at your electronic health record? They have no training and some of them are just out of high school, so they have no idea,” explained Rao. “So, I decided to create a whole story around it.”

Rao thinks the group could be a way to help others hone their own stories by prompting them with manageable writing goals, providing an environment for constructive feedback, and acting as a source of publishing contacts.

Writing can be overwhelming if it’s not something you are practiced at, and he hopes the group will help healthcare professionals, who typically get very little if any training in writing during their academic career, overcome their internal barriers and turn their creativity into action.

Writing can be a therapeutic form of self-expression for doctors who are often exposed to more than their fair share of trauma, and that’s important, says Rao.

“But the more interesting thing is immersing people in your world,” he said. “This is something I’d like to help other people with, because it will help them in terms of their own wellness, but maybe help them actually express themselves better in term of their scientific papers and documents.”

Or even get published.

“Put it down on paper and I personally will help you get it published if it’s something that’s really good,” he said. “And if this grows, maybe we could even do our own publishing.”

The group meets one evening a month on the CWRU campus. Anyone interested in joining should contact Goutham Rao Goutham.Rao@UHhospitals.org.