Patients want caregivers to be professional and competent. At the same time, patients expect a level of compassion and empathy from medical professionals. These two impulses can be contradictory.
Read moreThe Ultimate Meet & Greet: Our Hands Leading the Way by Hugh Silk
I was taught 80 percent of diagnosis comes from history (which is why we have to listen), 15 percent from our exam, and the multitude of tests we over-order helps with only 5 percent. However, the physical exam and a simple handshake do more than contribute to a diagnosis. It is how we bond and offer healing.
Read moreDoes A Poem A Day Keep the Doctor Away? Thoughts on Injecting A Dose of Culture in Medical Waiting Rooms by Debbie McCulliss
Scholars have begun encouraging doctors to gain more insight from their patients through narrative writing, especially poetry. According to Dr. Rita Charon, director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and co-editor of Literature and Medicine, “With narrative competence, physicians can reach and join their patients in illness, recognize their own personal journeys through medicine, acknowledge kinship with and duties toward other health care professionals, and inaugurate consequential discourse with the public about health care” (as cited in Encke, 2011).
Read moreHow Meta-Narratives Protect and Serve Us by Maureen Hirthler
As I was writing my MFA thesis this summer, I thought daily about narrative. After all, both medicine and memoir are about stories—ours, our patients—and my MFA has been about learning how to tell stories well. Stories should move us forward; occasionally they hold us back. Sometimes the true meaning of stories takes years to uncover.
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