About The Workshop

The Yale Internal Medicine Residency Writers’ Workshop is an annual two-day intensive writing workshop for Yale residents in internal medicine and other specialties (including psychiatry, pediatrics, radiology, OB/GYN, surgery, and emergency medicine). Twelve participants learn the nuts and bolts of good writing, give each other feedback on their stories and essays, work on revisions, and take part in writing exercises. After the workshop, participants continue to work on revising their essays and stories with ongoing mentoring by Drs. Reisman and Sanders. Each January, the participants give a reading to the Yale community, and the Department sponsors a Writing and Medicine Grand Rounds that features a visiting physician-writer.

The Yale Department of Internal Medicine established the Writers' Workshop in 2003.

Read more about the workshop in these studies:

• The Craft of Writing: A Physician-Writer's Workshop for Resident Physicians, in Journal of General Internal Medicine (2006)
• Writing Well: The Long-Term Effect on Empathy, Observation, and Physician Writing Through a Residency Writers' Workshop, in Journal of Graduate Medical Education (2017)

Anna Reisman, MD

Dr. Anna Reisman is Associate Professor in the Yale Department of Internal Medicine and has held a leadership role with the Writers’ Workshop since its inception. She is a general internist and sees patients at VA Connecticut Healthcare System as part of the Center of Excellence in Primary Care Education, a program that trains internal medicine residents and nurse practitioner residents. She directs the Program for Humanities in Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. She is a co-director of Yale School of Medicine's Committee for Art in Public Spaces, which is evaluating the existing portraiture and developing processes for the addition of new portraits and rotating exhibits.

Dr. Reisman’s writing and teaching focuses on communication, narrative, and health advocacy. She co-edited Telephone Medicine: A Guide for the Practicing Physician (ACP, 2002). Her essays and articles have been published in The New York Times, Slate, Discover Magazine, Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Health Affairs, Academic Medicine, Journal of General Internal Medicine, and other medical and non-medical journals.

Lisa Sanders, MD, FACP

Dr. Lisa Sanders, Associate Professor at the Yale School of Medicine, joined the Writers’ Workshop faculty in 2009. She created and writes the Diagnosis column for the New York Times Magazine. This column was the inspiration for the popular television show, House, M.D., and she was an advisor for the show. Her newest book, Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries is a collection of her columns. Her 2010 book, Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis, was a New York Times Book Review bestseller. In August 2019, the seven episode docu-series exploring diagnosis from the patient’s point of view that she developed debuted on Netflix.

The 2021 Capsules and video from the 17th Annual Writer's Workshop are available on "Workshop Publications & Press".