Guest Speaker Fatemeh Moussavi-Pourgharbi

Was a presentation by our guest speaker Fatemeh Moussavi-Pourgharbi on the subject of Creative Writing in Healthcare.

Fatemeh is a doctor now working on clinical trials. She has recently worked with the Open niversity on a project looking at the effect of creative writing on well-being. In particular, she has helped run a study looking at how creative writing (and, in particular writing about one’s own emotional problems through activities like ‘mindful journaling’) can have a positive effect on the immune system. In a small-scale experiment, such activity was even shown to have an effect on blood pressure.

Fatemeh gave some examples from her own experience of how creative writing helped her while working in high-pressure medical environments – e.g. during the recent covid crisis – where ‘losing’ a patients was an all too frequent occurrence.

Members were encouraged to think about and share their own experience of difficult times and what helped them through.