Sandra L. Bertman, PhD, FT is Distinguished Professor of Thanatology and Arts at the National Center for Death Education, Mount Ida College. Synthesizing visual and creative arts, literature, spiritual values, and cultural beliefs, Dr. Bertman’s expertise is cultivating the therapeutic imaginations of clinicians in clinical and academic settings through illustrated lecture-presentations and workshops. For most of her career, Bertman was Professor of Humanities in Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Graduate School of Nursing, and founding Director of the Program of Medical Humanities and Arts in Healthcare. She was affiliated with the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College as Research Professor in Palliative Care, and holds adjunct appointments at Dartmouth Medical School and Nova University. Her publication and media credits include the classic handbooks “Facing Death Images, Insights and Interventions,” “Grief and the Healing Arts: Creativity as Therapy,” the film “Dying,” the United Press International award winning radio show “Sing a Song of Dying,”, the book “One Breath Apart: Facing Dissection,” and the DVD and book “Art, Spirit and Soul” (forthcoming).

Currently for healthcare practitioners, she tailor-makes seminars on “Reflective Practice and Renewal,” “The New Ethics of the Human Spirit,” and is developing “Other Ways of Knowing: Using the Arts and Humanities to Teach End-of-Life Care,” which draws from the work she facilitated for the Botswana Nursing and Social Work Associations—intensive training in grief dynamics, principles of palliative care, multiple loss and compassion fatigue of caregivers affected and infected by HIV/AIDS—(see manual “Caring for the Caregivers”).

Bertman was named “Outstanding Death Educator” by both the Association of Death Education and Counseling and the National Center for Death Education, honored by the University of Massachusetts for Distinguished Professional and Public Service, co-recipient of the first humanities award by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and inducted into honorary membership to Sigma Theta Tau, the International Graduate Nursing Honor Society.

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