For Audrey Shafer M.D. ’83, professor emerita of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, medical humanities is the interdisciplinary study relating to “each human being to be mortal, to experience changes that affect our health or the health of a loved one.”

“Some people have the erroneous impression that medical humanities is about creating a more humane, nice physician,” Shafer said. “Hopefully physicians are already humane, already nice.”

Instead, through the lens of arts, humanities and qualitative social sciences, medical humanities develops critical thinking skills that enable physicians to see behind the curtains of patients’ worlds and gain a greater understanding of the human condition and of health, Shafer said.

Shafer founded “Medicine and the Muse,” the School of Medicine’s program in medical humanities and arts, in 2000.

She also founded the medical concentration in biomedical ethics and medical humanities in 2003 and co-directed the concentration until 2021. At the undergraduate level, Shafer supported professor of anthropology Tanya Luhrmann and associate professor of French and Italian Laura Wittman in establishing the medical humanities minor in 2023.

Regarding their collaborations in establishing the medical humanities minor, Luhrmann described Shafer’s passion in “trying to bridge the differences between a more literary artistic perspective and a more medical perspective.”

Brian Bateman, chair of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, told The Daily that the department has helped support Shafer’s humanities efforts, which is valuable for both faculty and trainees.

“The degree of focus on medical humanities and the degree to which we celebrate the artistic pursuits of our faculty is pretty unique to Stanford, and I think that has a lot to do with her and her leadership,” Bateman said.

Bryant Lin, clinical professor of medicine and current director of “Medicine and the Muse” told The Daily that he hopes to amplify Shafer’s work with “Medicine and the Muse” by increasing programs, courses and events at Stanford, as well as collaborations within the U.S. and beyond.

Shafer’s own interest in medical humanities sprouted from writing poetry.

When Shafer was 15, her father committed suicide, and her family didn’t talk about it. Instead, writing poetry was her way to “get some of [her] feelings out without breaking the sort of secrecy,” she said.

It wasn’t until attending medical school at Stanford, however, that Shafer took her first poetry-writing class. After returning to Stanford for her research fellowship, Shafer met poet and English professor emerita Denise Levertov, who Shafer said changed her life by enabling her to see that both her “mind and brain are working as a poet.”

In synchrony with poetry, Shafer developed an interest in anesthesiology when shadowing specialties during medical school, learning about “this whole other set of people who truly are keeping this patient alive and are critical for the operation to go well,” she said. The interaction and focus on one patient “meshed” with her, Shafer said.

Shafer was also drawn to the personal teaching environment. “It’s you and the resident and perhaps a medical student or some other kind of health profession student.” Standing together in the small area at the head of the patient’s bed, everyone has a common goal, she said.

After choosing anesthesiology, Shafer envisioned herself becoming a physician-scientist. Then, she found herself facing the “classic dilemma” for female professionals — starting a family while balancing an academic career.

Shafer chose not to complete her research, and with that, needed to decide what to do with her scholarly work.

Shafer had recently completed a study that compared the narratives of patients’ experiences with residents’ impressions of those experiences to better inform patient care. However, she was unsure where to publish the manuscript, given the study’s non-traditional nature.

At the Lane Medical Library, Shafer stumbled upon “Literature and Medicine,” a peer-reviewed journal exploring “representational and cultural practices concerning health care and the body.” Attending the journal’s next society meeting, Shafer was immediately drawn to the community of English professors, theologians, nurses, social workers, artists and more.

The members were “all there to interact and try to get a deeper understanding of what it means for us to be ill, to be mortal, to need healthcare, to have a disability, to provide care for someone else and to think critically about the healthcare system,” Shafer said.

In 1994, Shafer began teaching a new School of Medicine course, Literature and Medicine. After much student interest, Shafer proposed medical humanities as a scholarly concentration with former assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine Ramona Doyle and former assistant professor of pediatrics LaVera Crawley.

In 2001, Shafer invited students in the concentration and their mentors to a discussion held in her living room. In the following year, the symposium — newly titled “Medicine and the Muse” — featured a keynote speaker, student art and student presentations. “Medicine and the Muse” later grew into the School of Medicine’s program in medical humanities and arts. 

From falling in love with the community of anesthesiology to medical humanities herself, Shafer has since never failed to instill a similar sense of community with those around her.

“On a personal level, everyone loves her,” Wittman said, noting Shafer’s dedication to fostering connections among those around her. “I think that’s why ‘Medicine and the Muse’ has been so successful: she really made sure that people from lots of places at Stanford were meeting up and talking to each other and being able to exchange ideas.”

Wittman also attended one of Shafer’s retirement parties, with guests from both Stanford and the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System — a “testimony from people whose lives she had really transformed, just the way she transformed my own research,” Wittman said.

Lin described Shafer as “a consummate clinician, educator and poet who really understands the importance of and has propelled the significance of the humanities and medicine at Stanford and beyond for decades.” 

“She has this great ability to deeply connect with people on this really human level… with her colleagues, her students and her patients as well,” Lin said.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the year of Shafer’s symposium as 2021 instead of 2001. The Daily regrets this error.