Barbara Esrig, Writer in Residence

Barbara Esrig profilie picture
Barbara Esrig with a patient writing

In Memory of Barbara Esrig

Barbara became a writer in residence beginning in 1999; two years after a near fatal head-on collision brought her to then Alachua General Hospital, now UF Health Shands Hospital. She believed that an essential part of her recovery was not only the incredible doctors and staff in the hospital but her friends, her community and the artists in Arts in Medicine who saw her as a person who still had a full creative life, not just as “the car accident on 461”. Barbara was a writer in residence doing oral histories with patients as a way to remind them of what a full important life they have had and to honor them in this way, giving back to patients what people did for her. Before Barbara was in Arts in Medicine, she was a traveler, a midwife and a psychiatric nurse for many years, has a degree in cultural anthropology, and is a published writer. She believed her love and interest in people’s lives has reached a joyful culmination, and she integrated all these parts in Arts in Medicine.