When I first turned to writing, I had no knowledge of the field of narrative medicine.
It took four years of medical school, three years of residency, three years of subspecialty fellowship and over a decade in practice before I learned of it. (That’s more than 20 years, for those counting.)
Throughout, I’ve struggled to hold fast to my core belief that the key to patient care is to allow the telling of and make the space to listen to the stories underlying the disease.
Turns out, that’s what narrative medicine is all about.
As stated on the Columbia University Narrative Medicine website,
The care of the sick unfolds in stories … Medicine practiced with narrative competence is a model for humane and effective medical practice. It addresses the need of patients and caregivers to voice their experience, to be heard and to be valued, and it acknowledges the power of narrative to change the way care is given and received.
Here are six resources on the power of narrative medicine.
I hope they will help you as well.
1. “Creating a clearing” — Dr. Rita Charon on the power of narrative medicine
Dr. Rita Charon:
… the current state of affairs is really not benefitting the armies of clinicians and the numbers of patients, so let us prevail. And maybe if we’re left alone in our clearings, just the clinicians and the patients. Forget all the others. Forget the hospital executives and the American Medical Association. If we’re just left in a room together, maybe we can come to some pretty fine ideas of how to make things better for the patients which will, in turn, lead to fulfillment for that clinician. That’s what I’m hoping for.
Me too, Dr. Charon, me too!
2. Narrative medicine may help stem doctor burnout
Reuters Health News:
[narrative medicine] teaches doctors to focus on patients’ stories rather than a cut-and-dried checklist of symptoms, can help improve care for patients because their whole story is being heard. It can also help doctors work through their emotions while at the same time enhancing their feelings of empathy.
Double benefits of narrative medicine: better care for patients, better self-care for doctors.
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3. Narrative medicine for social and physician wellness
Jean Robey, MD:
Relationship-centered medicine has been considered a way to help doctors stay in love with doctoring, and that premise is supported by narrative medicine to help refocus the efforts of medicine around relationships.
Well said, Dr. Robey! Too many of us are at risk of falling out of love with doctoring.
4. From doctors’ stories to doctors’ stories, and back again
Marcia Day Childress, PhD:
… the 55-word story is a powerful tool for busy clinicians’ … the story must be 55 words exactly, no more and no fewer (not counting an optional title). There are no other rules …
The 55-word story has long had a place in my literature and medicine course, where senior medical students write to remember significant moments from their clerkships and then share their narratives with classmates. Here are two, by two of the story project’s leaders.
Don’t forget
The resident you (almost) followed into the bathroom.
All the times you felt completely clueless about where you were supposed to go or what to do.
The physics equation you couldn’t remember.
The residents who made you feel like part of the team.
All the incredible patients you had the opportunity to take care of.
An avocado tree in Monterrey
In his CCU bed with a failing heart, he told me about when that now sickly organ had driven a farm boy from Virginia to Monterrey, where he sat beneath an avocado tree with Elena. I plied him for more each day, treating his heart as he treated mine, unsure who was the greater beneficiary.
Consider this tool after a difficult patient encounter or day. 55 words — we can all do that!
5. Narrative medicine: a model for empathy,reflection, profession, and trust
Dr. Rita Charon:
Physicians have to find ways to talk simply, honestly, and deeply with patients, families, other health care professionals, and citizens. Together, they must make responsible choices about pain, suffering, justice, and mercy. Not scientific or rational debates, these are grave and daring conversations about meaning, values, and courage … patients and physicians together can describe and work toward a medical system undivided in effectiveness, compassion, and care.
This is also by Dr. Charon.
If you read only one essay to understand the field of narrative medicine, this would be the one I recommend:
Facing head-on the realities of serious illness … takes the savage imagination to recognize and then countenance the facts of suffering: unfair, unwarranted, vengeful, impersonal, neutral, demolishing of those whom it visits, without consolation, without the silver linings so often fabricated by those it fingers. There are only two paths open to those who must witness suffering: (1) pretend it is something else — predictable, resectable, eventually curable, spiritually enhancing, the thing that happens to others—or (2) see it fully and endure the sequelae of having seen.
What one gains by the sight of suffering is the knowledge of the cost of this life … to the clinicians who can bear to look full in the face at that which stalks their patients … a view of that floating bridge between here and there, that fragile passage between the knowable and the unknowable, that ground each one of us stands on in each lived moment (now, here, as you read my words; now, here, as I write them) with no guardrails, no signposts, no map, no territory; a clear-eyed discernment of this thing, this life, its worth.
How has narrative medicine helped you? How do you use narrative medicine in your practice? Are there any great resources that I missed, that you think I should add to this list?
Jennifer Lycette is a novelist, award-winning essayist, rural hematology-oncology physician, wife, and mom. Mid-career, Dr. Lycette discovered the power of narrative medicine on her path back from physician burnout and has been writing ever since. Her essays can be found in The Intima, NEJM, JAMA, and other journals. She can be reached on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Mastodon.
Her books explore the overarching theme of humanism in medicine. Her first novel, The Algorithm Will See You Now (Black Rose Writing Press), a near-future medical thriller, is available now. Her second novel, The Committee Will Kill You Now, a prequel in the form of a near-historical medical suspense, is out 11/9/23 and available for preorder now in paperback and on Kindle.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
