Impact & Outcomes
By integrating our healing arts programs into healthcare settings, we help counteract burnout and ease the emotional burden of healthcare workers.
This, in turn, leads to higher quality care for patients and their families.
Jackie Herd, RN, explains the value of our Listener Poets’ work.
Reflections from Participants
Mary Beth Botts, LCSW, talks about her session with a Listener Poet.
Matt Brown, RN, recalls the impact of his Listener Poet session.
“I thought it was very valuable to have a space that gave me the chance to think and talk about something that really mattered to me.
I ended up talking about something that has been on my mind for months. Something I haven’t been able to verbalize, or haven’t allowed myself to give words to before.”
“I found it to be an unexpected bright spot in my day.
Poetry captures a moment, and if you are in a medical setting and worry tempts you to project into the future, staying in the moment is helpful.”
Program Highlights
June 2025
By Ingrid Berg
A poem by Yvette Perry, TGLP Listener Poet was featured as part of an ethics education event for a large healthcare organization on April 29, 2025. “Living With Sickle Cell Disease” was the theme of the Spring 2025 “Ethics on the Big Screen” presentation held at the Benson Theatre in Omaha, Nebraska, sponsored by CommonSpirit.
March 2025
On Friday, March 28th, Cedars-Sinai hosted the Henrietta Lacks Symposium, a special event that also highlighted the release of a new anthology featuring poems by Listener Poets from The Good Listening Project (TGLP).
March 2025
On March 20th, The Good Listening Project (TGLP) had the honor of hosting Our Why, a poetry reading and story showcase for the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) Patient Support Team.
Giving Tuesday 2023
We loved receiving an outpouring of your deepest hopes for the future of healthcare. We hope you enjoy seeing how our communal "Poem for Our Future" reveals our shared dreams.
Workshops & Presentations
April 2022
Reflections on the presentation: “The Poetry of Good Listening: Implications for Undergraduate Medical Education from Voices Across Academic Medicine.”
April 2022
Reflections on our half-day leadership workshop with the Cambia Sojourns Scholars Community.
June 2025
Listener Poets Dr. Julia McDonald and Dr. Erin FitzGerald representing The Good Listening Project (TGLP) offered a powerful presence at a recent national healthcare conference by facilitating in-person listening sessions. Many shared that TGLP’s focus on provider wellness and resilience filled a much-needed gap in the conference experience.
June 2025
This volume uplifts the lived experiences of people with uteruses (and those who love them) through poetry that is unapologetically honest, moving, and needed.
May 2025
By Geva Thole
Patients in Emplify Health’s Inpatient Behavioral Health Unit are often there because they’ve lost touch with themselves. Some need to reconnect with their values. Others are trying to forgive themselves or contend with a difficult diagnosis. No matter the issue, participating in a Listener Poet session has shown to be helpful.
May 2025
Congratulations to Sailaja Devaguptapu, a member of the Certified Listener Poet Cohort 2, whose poem "The Falling Leaves The Growing Tree" is featured on the cover of Soul Connection, a quarterly multilingual literary magazine by Guwahati Grand Poetry Festival. Be sure to spend a moment with her beautiful, transformative poetry.
March 2025
Monica Storss, a TGLP scholarship recipient and member of our current Certified Listener Poet training cohort and current PhD student, created The Augmented Reality Poetry Machine as a way for people to experience poetry through cutting-edge technology.
March 2025
By Robert Minicucci
“Palliatively Speaking” Host Toby Campbell, MD, speaks to clinicians from all parts of palliative care—physicians, nurses, social workers, scientists, and chaplains. His guests bring guests—a great unexpected switch up that makes for a more interesting conversation. I felt a part of the conversation, as if his guest was speaking to me directly.
March 2025
Certified Listener Poet Erin FitzGerald, Cohort 9, invoked The Good Listening Project in a recent AAHPM (American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine) self care forum, in which she led palliative experts through a breathing exercise and reflection, and introduced the concept of generous listening.
February 2025
Congratulations to Julia McDonald, Certified Listener Poet Cohort 9, for a piece of creative non-fiction published in the January 2025 issue of The Sun and a poem accepted for publication in March by JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association).
February 2025
The 10th Cohort of the Certified Listener Poet course officially began on Monday, January 27th, as we welcomed nine new candidates into the program.
November 2024
“Narrative & Lyric Health at Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine”
by Scripts Fellows Bevin O’Connor and Nick Templeto
September 2022
By Frankie Abralind
Medical students are hungry for the humanities. Unfortunately, it’s not commonly included in their learning curricula. One professor, Dr. Dawn Schocken, DNP, is changing that.
Connect with us
If you have questions or if you would like to support good listening in your healthcare community, we’d love to hear from you.