October 30, 2006

To: The STFM Group on Spirituality
From: Gowri Anandarajah, MD, Co-Chair

Dear Friends:

A few months ago, Steve Kliewer sent you an e-mail introducing me as
the new co-chair of the Group on Spirituality for STFM, who is
working with him this year. I wanted to take a moment to introduce
myself to you, give you an update of current plans for the year and
elicit your ideas for future projects and directions. I believe that
in order for us to make membership in this group a valuable
experience for all of us, you need to know a little bit about me, and
I need to learn from you a little about why you are a member and what
you hope this group can provide.

For those of you who do not know me, I'm currently one on the faculty
at the Brown family medicine residency program in Rhode Island. I've
been at Brown since 1992, did my residency at Duke, and my medical
education at UNC and Dartmouth. Other than general family medicine
education, my main areas for teaching and scholarship have been
spirituality and medicine, the care of underserved populations(local
and international), the doctor-patient relationship, and end-of-life
care.

My interest in spirituality has been life-long. I've lived on 4
continents and have grown up with the culture and religion of both
the east and the west. I have a deep respect and admiration for all
the world's great spiritual traditions and find that the more I learn
and study the more I realize that I do not know – a very humbling
experience! I've been teaching courses on spirituality and medicine
at the medical school and residency levels for about 10 years.


Group Activities Since the Spring Conference:

1) Over the summer we submitted the group's goals and objectives for
the next year to STFM. They wanted these linked to the STFM
strategic plan and the FFM project. You should be able to view these
by going on the STFM website. Goals and objectives were based on
a review of the previous 3 years of our group goals, the STFM SP and
FFM, and discussion at the spring conference. Main goals for this
year are to develop core competencies in spirituality and medicine
for FM residencies; to provide opportunities and forums for
discussion about this topic at STFM; to support each other in
scholarly, research and teaching efforts; and to look into the role
spirituality can have in supporting physicians in sustaining their
involvement in service to their community.

2) We have also put together a small task force, which will be
working on developing a list of core competencies in spirituality and
patient care, specifically tailored for family medicine residency
training. We are hoping to present a working draft of this at the
next STFM Spring conference and hope to get feedback and input from
as many of you as possible at that time. We hope that if we are
successful in reaching consensus regarding core competencies, that
this will form the basis of developing a model curriculum in
spirituality and medicine in the future. Task force members are:
Gowri Anandarajah, MD; Steve Kliewer DMin, Fred Craigie PhD, Lu
Marchand MD, BSN, Tim Daaleman DO, MPH, Rob Hatch MD, MPH, Dana King
MS, MS, and Rick Hobbs MD.

3) The current size of this group is 154 members. As I've been
thinking about how best to serve you as co-chair, I realize that I
need more information about what you guys need as a group. Towards
this end, we are putting together a brief questionnaire to elicit
your thoughts about this group and it's future directions. I will be
sending this out to you in the next few months, and I hope you will
consider taking the time to fill it out and fill me in!



What the group needs from you:

1) Please use this List-Serve for any thoughts, information or
questions you would like to share with the group.

2) Consider attending the STFM conference next spring and bringing
your thoughts and energy to the "Group on Spirituality" meetings.

3) If you are interested in the core competency project or the future
development of a model curriculum, please consider attending the
Spring STFM conference, and/or contacting me, or one of the other
task force members.


That's all for now. I'm glad you are all members of this group. Let
us work together to raise the awareness of the positive and essential
role spirituality can play in the health and well-being of us all.
Sometimes small ripples of positive actions, filled with Love, can
have profoundly positive effects. Let's see how many ripples we can
generate!

Warmly,

Gowri