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There are many ways to study health in the process of becoming a health care practitioner. Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s offer some unique interdisciplinary paths that students can pursue to study health care, health care delivery and the business of health care.
Supporting Programs
The narrative practice minor provides pre-professional health students training in creative writing and program development while tying both to their future professions. Students in the minor deliver creative writing programming in hospitals, clinics, schools or other public spaces. They gain experience in empowering patient populations and community members to meet community health needs.
Students in the narrative practice minor receive clinical experiences via ongoing collaborations with the St. Cloud Hospital and the CentraCare Kidney Dialysis Unit. In bridging the gaps between creative writing and medical training, narrative practice students receive a truly interdisciplinary education – unique to the CSB and SJU undergraduate curriculum – and find themselves better prepared to negotiate the health, sickness and lives of future patients.
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HELP is a delirium prevention program allowing Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s students to round on patients admitted to the St. Cloud Hospital and hold creative-writing sessions with these patients to offer mental stimulation. In addition to working in-person with patients, we created the ability for our on-site Student Coordinators to connect patients and students, remotely, via video links. Currently, we are serving Surgical Units 1 & 2 and the Oncology Care Unit at the St. Cloud Hospital with in-person and remote visits.
Marrying creative writing to medical practice allows students to tie humanistic inquiry to exploring illness, health and the clinician/patient relationship. Specifically, students use the tools of creative writing to break the social isolation facing many hospital patients, providing meaningful mental and social stimulation to prevent the onset of delirium. Students apply the tools of scientific inquiry to learn which session constructions, content, transitions and environmental factors lead to active patient participation in the creative-writing process.
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The global health minor at Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s is a 20-credit interdisciplinary program that teaches students to think critically about global health challenges and solutions to global health problems. The program emphasizes the contributions that the social sciences and humanities – such as anthropology, sociology, history, communications and psychology – can make to understanding human experiences of health, illness and healing.
Students with a global health minor will be prepared for a wide variety of careers both locally and internationally in health care, public health, non-profit work and more.
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The neuroscience minor draws heavily from disciplines such as biology, psychology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science. The minor is also valuable to students in pre-allied health programs. Exciting areas of growth in the neuroscience field also connect to philosophy, economics and peace studies.
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The Entrepreneur Scholars program provides students from all disciplines the opportunity to design and implement a world-class business venture. This is a perfect program for students interested in the med tech device industry and technology transfer.
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Data analysis has come to the forefront of society in multiple dimensions. In politics, business, finance, the economy, the environment, international relations, the arts, genetics, health care, and in the study of languages and history, data analysis has always been of great importance. However, information technologies and increasing availability of data have provided new avenues of inquiry and exploration in the pursuit of knowledge, in the pursuit of the common good, and in the pursue to private interest. Whatever your area of interest, your path will often cross some need to engage in thoughtful and ethical analysis of data and will require that you can communicate those findings. Deeply embedded in the liberal arts, the data analytics program at Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s seeks to provide such learning and development opportunities for students, regardless of their major or inquiry of interest. This is a great program for students interested in health care policy, logistics and administration.
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College of Saint Benedict
Saint John’s University
Manuel Campos, Ph.D.
Coordinator, Pre-professional Health Programming
SJU New Science Center, Room 108
320-363-3180