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Registration for our virtual 2022 event is now open!

4th Annual Jacalyn Duffin Health and Humanities Conference

Date/Time: Saturday, April 9, 2022; 10 AM – 3:30 PM EST
Location: Virtual
Cost: Free

The Jacalyn Duffin Health and Humanities Conference aims to create a space where learners and educators of all disciplines can discuss the intersections of health, medicine, and the arts and humanities. The conference is named for Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, hematologist and Canadian medical historian who was the inaugural Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine at Queen’s University School of Medicine. Dr. Duffin’s work has influenced healthcare. She was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2019.

This year’s conference theme is ‘Beyond the Body.’ Illness is largely perceived as a physical phenomenon, definitively diagnosed using lab values, imaging, and tangible findings. While these objective measures inextricably form the basis of medicine, there exists a wholly different vantage point from which to view health: that which considers the deep and complex subjective experience of every patient. Patients do not stop being people once they enter a hospital; all are situated within unique contexts that influence wellbeing, bodies, and identities. ‘Beyond the Body’ aims to convey the multitude of ways in which the arts and humanities not only humanize our experiences with health and illness, but also help healthcare providers better understand people—not as fixed objects, but as dynamic, changing processes. In conjunction with our eyes, hands, and instruments, the arts and humanities shine light on what is unseen, and can inform what one needs to heal.

The Jacalyn Duffin Health & Humanities Conference is committed to increasing the accessibility of our events. If participants have accommodations requests in addition to the standard outlined by the Queen’s Medicine Aesculapian Society Accessibility Policy (https://meds.queensu.ca/qmed/council/constitutional-documents), they are welcome to contact the event organizers at queens.humed@gmail.com up to 3 weeks before the event. If participants have any feedback about accessibility before/during/after the event, they are invited to fill out the Accessibility Feedback Form here: https://forms.gle/VHAFtdmPsPZwbyFR7.