After nearly 38 years of practicing Medicine and 13 years of embracing the Internet and discovering what good it has done and will continue to do, I present to you a new portal, EPHEMERISPROJECT.COM.

My background includes over 35 years of experience as a clinician, educator, advisor and mentor to medical students, nursing and midwifery students, housestaff, and patients. As an Obstetrician, my professional career has involved a striving to bring comfort and healing to children, born and yet to born, and to mothers through their years of childbearing and beyond. It has been the cause in my life. I have been uplifted by the triumphs of birth and healing and depressed by the failures. Yet I have always tried to look beyond the failures in search of the triumphs. I have counseled patients at the darkest times of their lives, when their children have died, and I have turned to the comfort of personal reflection, poetry and self-expression to better help me help my patients.  I have learned that by writing down  thoughts which might elucidate my feelings more clearly than the spoken word,  I have become a better physician.   For me the writing of poetry, sending poems to my patients and reading poems at funeral services for my patients, friends and colleagues has given me immeasurable meaning and fulfillment for my work which I now want to share with the healthcare professionals of tomorrow. The EPHEMERIS PROJECT is a program of Hygeia Health Systems and the Hygeia Foundation, Inc.. The first program of Hygeia Health Systems was Hygeia.org. Hygeia.org began in 1995 as many projects do to fulfill a personal mission. At its inception, it was one of only a few programs dedicated to pregnancy and neonatal loss utilizing Internet Technology. It remains the only program which is totally edited, managed and sponsored by a physician (Obstetrician/Gynecologist) who cares daily for patients experiencing these losses. It has a growing global membership of over 29,000 families and very active message boards. Much has changed in Medicine and on the Internet since the inception of Hygeia, but its mission perseveres…using new technologies to share age-old feelings and lessons, and its founding principles remain: a. emphasize and incorporate humanism with technology; b. strive to reduce parallel disparities in access to both healthcare services and Information technologies. In 1997,I founded  the Hygeia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization whose mission is to bring to medically indigent and under-served populations, nationally and internationally, interactive information with regards to Maternal and Child Health and facilitate access to these services. All of the Hygeia Health System programs are ongoing and successful.

What is the EPHEMERIS PROJECT? 

• The EPHEMERIS PROJECT is an Internet-based system of self-reflection, journaling, mentoring and advocacy intended to preserve those personal values and ethics fundamental to the Healthcare Professional Student. 
• The EPHEMERIS PROJECT is a portal where patients and families can journal  their own thoughts and feeling with privacy or recall their stories and feelings and share them in a public forum. Journaling and self-reflection will help the user find insight and solace. This forum now brings a new dimension of caring and sharing for health professionals, health professional students and patients- available now int one place.
• The EPHEMERIS PROJECT is mentoring.  I am passionate about teaching young physicians, both the science and the philosophy of the privilege of being a physician. Such Mentorship is essential and integral to the EPHEMERIS PROJECT. (see full discussion of mentoring ).  Mentoring is provided by Peer or Student-nominated Faculty, advisors and Program Directors in participating institutions.
• The EPHEMERIS PROJECT helps those who are affected by the diseases, disorders and emotions inherent the health care of the patient today through personally screened and selected essays, poetry, stories, and works of art and music relevant to health and healing.
• The EPHEMERIS PROJECT offers the opportunity to have an original Poem of Eulogy or Celebration rededicated to a loved one, a patient or a professional in their memory or in their honor -or a poem to give to them as a gesture that you are thinking of them. This can be a simple yet significantly memorable thought for all Healthcare Professionals and Students as well for family members of patients. My poetry, poetry " of and or occasions," is concerned with loss and hope, despair and elation, triumph and failure written out my need to express my feelings to my patients and give them solace and comfort.  Poetry has a unique position in Medical Care as expressed by the following statements:

“The humanities and arts provide insight into the human condition, suffering, personhood; our responsibility to each other…”   Felice Aull, Ph.D., M.A.

I am fully committed to this aspect of medical practice and medical education for the the healthcare consumer and the healthcare professional.  I hope this program in its entirety will be beneficial to you who are using it.  Please feel free to write me and inquire further about this program.  I am also available and anxious to speak to professionals and the public about this so very important aspect of Healthcare.

Michael R. Berman, M.D.
Fellow, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Clinical Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences
Yale University School of Medicine

berman@ephemerisproject.com