Kienle Supports Projects and Initiatives that Promote Empathy and Compassion
In the Key of D Concert Series: A free concert series for employees and students. These performances by local and national professional musicians feature the Steinway D concert grand piano in Lecture Room D.
The Practice of Art: Guided tours of the Susquehanna Art Museum open to all Penn State Health and College of Medicine employees and students.
Kienle Student Art Workshops: A series of participatory arts workshops for our medical students. Professional teaching artists lead two-hour art workshops designed for pleasure, reflection and community building.
Story Slam: An evening for Penn State Health and College of Medicine employees, students and guests to share 5-minute stories on stage based on a chosen theme. A relaxed atmosphere welcomes celebratory, profound, compassionate and empathetic glimpses into the lives and perspectives of coworkers and friends.
Drum Circles: Penn State Health and College of Medicine employees and students gather for group drumming sessions facilitated by a professional teaching drummer.
Kienle Gretna partnership: Penn State Health and College of Medicine employees and students are offered tickets to attend Gretna Music concerts, featuring excellent and diverse music and musicians.
Story Circles: Penn State Health and College of Medicine employees and students engage in storytelling exercises to enhance deep listening and communication skills.
2024 Special Projects:
Graphic Medicine International Collective (GMIC) Frontline Comics Project: Michael Green, Project Lead
Kienle awarded $10,000 to advance Phase 2 of the initiative to connect cartoonists from around the world with people on the front lines of the COVID pandemic. During Phase 1, the group produced and published 7 original stories about the pandemic from healthcare providers around the country, including a couple of stories from Penn State. For Phase 2 of the project, they shifted the focus slightly to emphasize a more diverse group of frontline workers’ experiences, both in terms of geographic and occupational diversity.
We put out another call for storytellers and artists and received a robust response from more than 100 artists and 50 storytellers around the world. The group plans to post all the completed stories on the Frontline Comics Project website frontlinecomicsproject.org, and will present the stories at the Annual Meeting of the Graphic Medicine International Collective in Athlone, Ireland.
Program Highlight
More About Me: In this program, Kienle staff invites patients to share non-medical facts about themselves. Together, they craft three statements. These statements are then posted behind the patient’s bed to help healthcare providers connect with their patients. In fiscal year 23-24, 731 patients on the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th floors participated in the More About Me program.
Nurse Managers on each floor were surveyed about their experiences. Each one was effusive about its impact. Here are some of their comments:
“This program helps reassure the patient and family that we’re seeing them as an individual and valuing their interests.”
“This program really helps with delirium prevention. Any time patients can talk about their interests, job, etc., it helps keep their mind active and grounds them, which can prevent delirium – and it’s really helpful that staff have that info easily at hand so they know what will get their patients engaged and talking.”
“The strength of the More About Me Program for NCCU is that it helps give a voice to those patients who may have lost theirs during their illness.”
“It helps members of the healthcare team to get to know a little more about the patients we care for, and can tailor conversations to a topic they prefer.”
The Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine
Announces 2024 Humanitarian Award Winners
Four exceptional individuals earned recognition from the Penn State College of Medicine’s Kienle Center, housed in the Department of Humanities.
Kienle Director Claire de Boer says, “We are proud to bestow these awards to several special individuals who provide humanitarian care and who exhibit extraordinary empathy in our health care settings. Each of these awardees exhibits distinct compassion in a professional role of healthcare.”
Awards recognize winners who demonstrate a commitment to humanitarian service. Kienle’s mission is to cultivate empathy and compassion in healthcare. Nominations for the awards are anonymous but highlight the distinct personal and altruistic nature of these awards.
2024 Mary Louise Witmer Jones Humanitarian Award
Alexander Lee, MD, Emergency Medicine Resident
“Alex works tirelessly and professionally to support the Penn State Health mission ensuring that his patients are represented, heard, cared for, informed, and satisfied. However, it is Alex’s compassion and enthusiasm that distinguishes him from other outstanding residents. For instance, he is often found bringing warm blankets to patients, coordinating wellness nights with his peers outside of the hospital, and engaging medical students during resident didactics.” – Nominator
“Being nominated and chosen for this award is an incredible honor. I am very grateful to those who have voiced their support and believe my efforts have made a positive impact on fellow colleagues, students, and most of all our patients. Humanistic care is especially important in the stressful environment of the emergency department. Patience, compassion, and kindness go a long way in reducing anxiety, healing pain, and creating an overall pleasant patient experience.” – Alexander Lee, MD
2024 Third-Year Medical Student Humanitarian Award
Kelan Fogarty, MD Candidate (MS3) | Class of 2025
“Kelan has taken the lead at this campus in promoting engagement with medical humanities as a way to promote a more humanistic approach to patient care most recently he has started a more about me program at Mount Nittany, Medical Center, and effort that took well over a year to launch while navigating the administrative challenges of a local health system. He represents the type of humanistic physician that Penn State seeks to cultivate.” – Nominator
“I am immensely grateful to be recognized for this award. My peers and colleagues have proven instrumental in our efforts to increase compassionate and humanistic care, and I would be remiss without acknowledging it took a team-based approach to make this possible. The importance of humanistic care cannot be overstated. Each day, I am fortunate to meet new people with new stories, allowing me to be part of their lives. There is an inherent vulnerability that should be met with cultural sensitivity, tactfulness, and kindness. Behind the guise of a ‘patient’ is a human waiting to be heard, and to me, that is foundational to humanistic care.” – Kelan Fogarty
2024 Third-Year Medical Student Humanitarian Honorable Mention
Lydia Smeltz, MD Candidate (MS3) | Class of 2025
“I am incredibly honored to have been nominated and chosen for this award. To me this means that patients and colleagues I interact with feel seen – for who they are as patients or clinicians, who they are as family members, who they are as athletes or musicians or chefs, and ultimately, who they are as humans. Humanistic care is important to me as it allows me to approach everyone I interact with with humility and respectful curiosity.”
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2024 Nurse’s Humanitarian Award in Honor of Lawrence F. Kienle, MD
Jo Johnston, IP Nurse, Nurse Coordinator, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
“I have been privileged to witness her care for her patience with a remarkable level of kindness and compassion. She is something of a ‘whisperer’ with patient families that otherwise have garnered reputations for being difficult. She consistently seeks out patient and their families that come from less than perfect socioeconomic situations families that often need a little more kindness and understanding.” – Nominator
“I was floored when I found out that I had won the Kienle Humanitarian Nurse Award. I had no idea that I had been nominated. To me, this award means that I have not been alone in caring for my patients and their families, that people have noticed the hard work that I have put into my career. I will be forever humbled and grateful for this recognition. Humanistic care is important to my work because in the end, we all have the same goal – that ourselves and our loved ones will be alright. I try to treat every single person that I care for with the dignity afforded to them simply for being a fellow human being. I nurse with my whole heart, and that speaks more to my patients than words ever could.”
– Jo Johnson, RN
2024 Joseph and Mary Caputo Scholarship Award (Requires a letter of recommendation.)
Cynthia (Cici) Burke, MD Candidate, Class of 2025
“Cynthia (Cici) Burke embodies the compassion, dedication, and empathy that are the hallmarks of humanistic medicine, and I firmly believe she will continue to honor the legacy of Joseph and Mary Caputo by providing exceptional and compassionate care to patients and their families.”
– Nominator
“All the medical knowledge and technology in the world means little unless we can form partnerships with patients and families. As physicians (and physicians in training), we are entrusted with some of the most vulnerable and intimate moments of people’s lives, and some of their most difficult decisions. We must connect with our patients and their unique experiences to earn and maintain that trust.” – Cici Burke
We thank our Kienle Advisory Council
N. Benjamin Fredrick, MD; Marangelie Diffendahl, RN; Michael J. Green, MD; Angel L. Schuster, MD; Rebecca Volpe, PhD
About The Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine
Originally established as the Center for Humanistic Medicine in 1979 and renamed The Doctors Kienle Center in 1991, this center initiatives aimed at promoting a humane, compassionate and patient-centered approach to medicine. The Center is named in honor of the late Drs. Lawrence F. Kienle and Jane Witmer Kienle, whose generous support created the center.
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The Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine
Cultivating empathy and compassion in healthcare