Document is current

Article History

Accepted: 28 September 2020

First Online: 2 November 2020

Compliance with Ethical Standards

:

: The author has no known conflict of interest with respect to this work. The author is Scholar in Residence in the History of Medicine Program, a program associated with the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. She has no direct, formal appointment to the Department of Psychiatry, the Faculty of Medicine or to the Mount Sinai Hospital. The only incentive for those participating in the Health Narratives Research Group she facilitates is it being free of charge to participants. Since 2016, the author has been provided with three $500 grants from the Health Arts and Humanities Program of the University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry for facilitating the Health Narratives Research Group. Pre COVID-19, weekly meeting space for the group was provided at the Toronto Mount Sinai Hospital through the Department of Psychiatry. The author receives no remuneration from the University of Toronto or the Mount Sinai Hospital.

: Members were provided with written information that the HeNReG was a voluntary, non-credit group encouraging diversity that members may join at any time. In responding to this written information by email, participants acknowledged their understanding that they were under no obligation to attend any specific number of meetings or to continue as part of the group.

: Approval to use the information pertaining to, and doodles of, HeNReG participants was granted by each member in email or Messenger responses to the author in agreeing to join the group upon being provided with the following information: “By joining, members agree their work may be anonymously referenced in presentations given and/or scholarly articles written by the facilitator regarding the yearly results of the HeNReG.”

: This is an observational study. Research Ethics Board approval was not obtained as there was no formal research undertaken and the author is not employed by either the University of Toronto or the Mount Sinai Hospital. Her facilitation of the Health Narratives Research Group (HeNReG) is on a volunteer basis. No participants were harmed as part of the HeNReG.