The McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics successfully launched its Medical Humanities Workforce Training Program for Physicians with its first intensive weekend event Jan. 17 at the Ensemble Theatre in Houston.
The Medical Humanities Workforce Training Program is a 24-month course designed for self-development, reconnection, and renewal. The program is cohort-style and primarily virtual, with two semester-long courses each year.
Physicians attend live virtual classes once or twice monthly and participate in asynchronous online and self-directed learning. Additionally, learners experience Houston’s culinary and artistic offerings during in-person intensives held over two weekends in the Texas Medical Center.
“I’m really pleased with the community that we are building, not only here in Houston, but nationally and internationally,” said Nathan Carlin, PhD, director and Samuel E. Karff, DHL, Chair in the John P. McGovern, MD, Center for Humanities and Ethics, as well as professor and John P. McGovern, MD, Chair in Medical Humanities at the medical school. “It’s exciting for me to see like-minded people connect over creativity and compassion. It is a real honor to be able to provide a platform for these gifted and caring people.”
The inaugural cohort consists of 17 enrollees spread around the country and the world. Members hail from Texas; Hawaii; North Carolina; Connecticut; Mississippi; Florida; Ohio; California; Washington, D.C.; and Beirut, Lebanon. One attendee, Joe Braun, MD, is living on a boat and traveling the world for a five-year period, but made it a priority to attend the intensive weekend.
“I found this training program the ideal place to explore and discuss with other fellows from diverse backgrounds the existential questions related to medicine,” said Beatrice Khater, MD, assistant professor of clinical family medicine at the American University of Beirut. “We are crossing together the bridge between science and experience.”
The 2026 intensive weekend featured “Burnout: A Music and Picture Show,” a live, interdisciplinary performance developed during Laura Spector’s residency at the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics. Combining music arranged by Bradley Dean Whyte, projected artwork, personal storytelling, and recorded interviews with health care professionals, the piece explores burnout not as a single breaking point, but a slow accumulation of pressures — grief, caregiving, overwork, and the quiet erosion of self.
“Burnout isn’t a dramatic collapse. It’s a slow fading,” Spector said. “This show is about noticing that fade and finding your way back.”
Rather than offering clinical answers, the show asks what recovery looks like in real life: rest as a practice, community as support, and art as a way to process what words alone can’t hold. The result is intimate, honest, and unexpectedly funny — a shared experience that resonates across medicine, education, and the arts.
“During the 21 years of the McGovern Center’s many programs and events, ‘Burnout’ was the largest event that we have ever had,” Carlin said. “It was a packed house. It was so wonderful to partner with Ensemble Theatre on this, to be able to offer an event literally on Main Street in Houston. The space was just beautiful. I’m really pleased with this visibility both in our institution and in the broader Houston community.”
The second semester of the inaugural cohort begins Feb. 15 and runs through May 15. The second year will start Sept. 15, with the final intensive weekend being held Jan. 16-17, 2027. Applications to join the second cohort (2026-28) of the Medical Humanities Workforce Training Program for Physicians are open now through May 15.