From storytelling to surgery: Medical students embrace the arts

An outlet for creativity and healing

The Center for the Art of Medicine incorporates the arts into the education of medical students and residents through reflective writing electives, writing workshops, live storytelling events and other arts and humanities-focused courses.

Its Storytelling in Medicine Program in particular recognizes that stories — specifically about the experiences of healthcare workers and patients — are a powerful way to connect, empathize, and even heal both patients and physicians. 

“Our symbol, kind of our motto, is a hand that's writing, and a hand that's doing a surgical incision,” says Assistant Professor of Medicine Tseganesh Selameab (BS, ’99; MD, ’04), a Hennepin Healthcare hospitalist and associate director of the center. 

Selameab says that for years, medical schools taught physicians to be neutral, to deal with only facts and to be entirely objective. 

Selameab says that some students have been drawn to the University of Minnesota Medical School specifically because of its Center for the Art of Medicine, while others have discovered its value only after enrolling.

“The juxtaposition of art and humanities and medicine is as old as doctors have been doctoring,” says Selameab. “But there are few centers that actually bring all of that work under one roof.” 

Laurel Neufeld ’26, a fourth-year med student who grew up in South Minneapolis, will soon be a family medicine doctor, somewhere near the Twin Cities, she hopes. 

Unlike Mensinger, who has long been interested in creative writing, Neufeld says she had little previous experience outside of college essays before participating in a Center for the Art of Medicine reflective writing activity. She went on to attend a related monthly writing group where med students, residents and practicing physicians meet and share their stories, and where she shared her own.

“I was surprised by how much resolution I got in writing about things that I had been carrying,” Neufeld says. “There was a patient encounter I was holding onto, and writing it down helped me make some more meaning out of it. It seemed like a tool that I would want to keep using.”

And she has. Neufeld is one of about eight students, residents and other practicing medical professionals selected by the center to present during its April 30 event, “The Art of Medicine: For the Moment.” The center partners with Story Arts of Minnesota on coaching participants and in the production of the event. The community organization helps develop storytellers and promote storytelling as a performance art. 

Though Neufeld is working to refine her story, she says, “It will be a collection of lots of little moments, and I don't exactly know how they come together.” 

Her story will center around bike commuting. 

Something for the pain

One of the most common themes in what might be called the story of being human is around death and dying, says Selameab. But there are other stories as well. 

“We get stories of awe, just awe at what medicine is able to do, the depth of human connection, just the awesomeness of some of the places and spaces we find ourselves,” Selameab says. And conversely, of despair and helplessness, of what does it mean for a physician to be a healer who can't do anything but witness?”

Since she performed during the Center for the Art of Medicine’s 2025 event, Megan Mensinger has gone on to publish creative work in a medical journal, where she wrote:

“After my tribulations as a scribe, I almost walked away from medicine for good. But with my hand on the door I hesitated. … There is so much left to learn in my training. I find it daunting and beautiful. … A faint pulse of peace, getting stronger. My potential, a promise that might just be fulfilled. A chance to offer something for the pain.”