Clinical Outreach Librarian
Background
Narrative medicine is an interdisciplinary approach to healthcare that emphasizes the importance of understanding and engaging with patients' stories or narratives as a means of improving healthcare outcomes. The field was originally developed by physician and literary scholar Rita Charon in the 1990s as a response to what she saw as a lack of attention to the patient's experience of illness and suffering in medical education and practice.
Narrative medicine draws on the tools and methods of literary analysis and interpretation to help healthcare providers understand the patient's narrative and its significance for their care. This includes close reading of written and spoken narratives, reflective writing, and group discussion and analysis.
Narrative medicine recognizes that the patient's story is an essential part of the healing process and that understanding their perspective can help healthcare providers to tailor their care to the patient's needs and preferences. It encourages healthcare providers to engage in active listening, empathetic communication, and to acknowledge the patient's values and goals.
Narrative medicine has been shown to improve patient satisfaction, increase patient engagement in their own care, and lead to better healthcare outcomes. It has also been recognized as a valuable tool for medical education, allowing students and healthcare providers to better understand the patient experience and to develop the skills needed to provide compassionate and effective care.
"The effective practice of medicine requires narrative competence, that is, the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others." (Charon R. Narrative Medicine: A Model for Empathy, Reflection, Profession, and Trust. JAMA. 2001;286(15):1897–1902. doi:10.1001/jama.286.15.1897)
Resources
We Are All Perfectly Fine by
When we need help, we count on doctors to put us back together. But what happens when doctors fall apart? Funny, fresh, and deeply affecting, We Are All Perfectly Fine is the story of a married mother of three on the brink of personal and professional collapse who attends rehab with a twist: a meditation retreat for burned-out doctors. Jillian Horton, a general internist, has no idea what to expect during her five-day retreat at Chapin Mill, a Zen centre in upstate New York. She just knows she desperately needs a break. At first she is deeply uncomfortable with the spartan accommodations, silent meals and scheduled bonding sessions. But as the group struggles through awkward first encounters and guided meditations, something remarkable happens: world-class surgeons, psychiatrists, pediatricians and general practitioners open up and share stories about their secret guilt and grief, as well as their deep-seated fear of falling short of the expectations that define them. Jillian realizes that her struggle with burnout is not so much personal as it is the result of a larger system failure, and that compartmentalizing your most difficult emotions--a coping strategy that is drilled into doctors--is not useful unless you face these emotions too. Jillian Horton throws open a window onto the flawed system that shapes medical professionals, revealing the rarely acknowledged stresses that lead doctors to depression and suicide, and emphasizing the crucial role of compassion not only in treating others, but also in taking care of ourselves.
ISBN: 1443461636Publication Date: 2021-02-23
Being Mortal: medicine and what matters in the end by
#1 New York Times Bestseller In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified. Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.
ISBN: 9780805095159Publication Date: 2014-10-07
Narrative Medicine by
Narrative medicine has emerged in response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient. Generated from a confluence of sources including humanities and medicine, primary care medicine, narratology, and the study of doctor-patient relationships, narrative medicine is medicine practiced with the competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness. By placing events in temporal order, with beginnings, middles, and ends, and by establishing connections among things using metaphor and figural language, narrative medicine helps doctors to recognize patients and diseases, convey knowledge, accompany patients through the ordeals of illness--and according to Rita Charon, can ultimately lead to more humane, ethical, and effective health care. Trained in medicine and in literary studies, Rita Charon is a pioneer of and authority on the emerging field of narrative medicine. In this important and long-awaited book she provides a comprehensive and systematic introduction to the conceptual principles underlying narrative medicine, as well as a practical guide for implementing narrative methods in health care. A true milestone in the field, it will interest general readers, and experts in medicine and humanities, and literary theory.
ISBN: 0195166752Publication Date: 2006-03-02
Narrative Medicine by
Narrative Medicine: A Rhetorical Rx rests on the principles that storytelling is central to medical encounters between caregivers and patients and that narrative competence enhances medical competence. Thus, the book's goal is to develop the narrative competence of its reader. Grounded in the rhetorical theory of narrative that Phelan has been constructing over the course of his career, this volume utilizes a three-step method: Offering a jargon-free explication of core concepts of narrative such as character, progression, perspective, time, and space. Demonstrating how to use those concepts to interpret a diverse group of medical narratives, including two graphic memoirs. Pointing to the relevance of those demonstrations for caregiver-patient interactions. Narrative Medicine: A Rhetorical Rx is the ideal volume for undergraduate students interested in pursuing careers in healthcare, students in medical and allied health professional schools, and graduate students in the health humanities and social sciences.
ISBN: 9781000641981Publication Date: 2022-10-27
Cultivating Compassion by
This book explores how digital storytelling can catalyze change in healthcare. Edited by the co-founders of the award-winning Patient Voices Programme, the authors discuss various applications for this technique; from using digital storytelling as a reflective process, to the use of digital stories in augmenting quantitative data. Through six main sections this second edition covers areas including healthcare education, patient engagement, quality improvement and the use of digital storytelling research. The chapters illuminate how digital storytelling can lead to greater humanity, understanding and, ultimately, compassion. This collection will appeal to those involved in delivering, managing or receiving healthcare and healthcare education and research, as well as people interested in digital storytelling and participatory media.
ISBN: 9783319641454Publication Date: 2018-03-13
Wit by
Vivian Bearing is an English professor with a biting wit that educates but also alienates her students. With her teaching and life both rigidly under control, Vivian would never let down her defenses, until the day comes when they are taken don for her. Diagnosed with a devastating illness, Vivian agrees to undergo a series of procedures that are brutal, extensive, and experimental. For eight months her life must take an uncharted course. No longer a teacher, but a subject for others to study. Vivian Bearing is about to discover a fine line between life and death that can only be walked with wit.
Call Number: Mills Library Available , Mills Library 4th Floor Multimedia ; FILM 1076ISBN: 0783118414Publication Date: 2001
- Bending the Arc "A powerful documentary about the extraordinary team of doctors and activists - including Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl - whose work thirty years ago to save lives in a rural Haitian village grew into a global battle in the halls of power for the right to health for all. Epic, yet intimate, the film is a compelling argument for the power of collective and personal vision and will to turn the tide of history." -- Container.
- Worlds Apart: Mohammad Kochi's Story Mr. Kochi is a 63-year-old man from Afghanistan who is diagnosed with stomach cancer. He agrees to have surgery, but later refuses his oncologist's recommendation for chemotherapy due to religious beliefs, language barriers, and family conflict. The film raises an awareness about the role sociocultural barriers play in patient-provider communication and in the provision of healthcare services for culturally and ethnically diverse patients.
- “A Reflection of Growing Inequality”: Dr. Paul Farmer on the Deadly Ebola Outbreak in West Africa As the death toll from the West African Ebola outbreak nears 1,400, two American missionaries who received experimental drugs and top-notch healthcare have been released from the hospital. We spend the hour with Partners in Health co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer discussing what can be done to stop the epidemic and the need to build local healthcare capacity, not just an emergency response. “The Ebola outbreak, which is the largest in history that we know about, is merely a reflection of the public health crisis in Africa and it's about the lack of staff, stuff and systems that could protect populations, particularly those living in poverty, from outbreaks like this or other public health threats,” says Farmer, who has devoted his life to improving the health of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. He is a professor at Harvard Medical School and currently serves as the special advisor to the United Nations on community-based medicine. He has written several books including, “Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues.”
- Docs with Disabilities The DocsWithDisabilities team uses research, education, and sharing of stories to drive change in policy and procedure leading to more inclusive educational environments for students with disabilities.
- The Story Collider: True, Personal Stories About Science The Story Collider's mission is to reveal the vibrant role that science plays in all of our lives through the art of personal storytelling. At our live storytelling events in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., people of all walks of life – from scientists and doctors to journalists and comedians to artists, firefighters, and bartenders – tell stories about how science has affected their lives. We share a selection of these stories on our weekly podcast, which The Washington Post has called “delightful, devastating, and endlessly listenable.” Over the years, we have developed our storytelling coaching practice into an Education Program, which offers public and private storytelling trainings to both individuals and groups.
Poetry Therapy by
In this third edition of Poetry Therapy, Dr. Mazza expands on poetry therapy applications and techniques, carefully illustrating the use of poems, expressive writing, and symbolic activities for healing, education, and community service. Building on the definition and foundation of poetry therapy, chapters discuss using Mazza's poetry therapy model with individuals, families, groups, and communities. Featuring over a hundred new references and practice experiences, the updated edition covers new research findings and methods, especially with respect to expressive writing and brain activity. Additional updates include working with special populations such as minorities, persons with disabilities, veterans, and the LGBTQ+ community. New chapters on spirituality, the COVID-19 pandemic, and personal development through poetry and running are also featured. Each chapter ends with questions for reflection. This is a truly invaluable resource for any practitioner, educator, or researcher interested in poetry therapy, bibliotherapy, writing, and healing, or the broader area of creative arts and expressive therapies.
ISBN: 1003022642Publication Date: 2021-12-24
Poetry in the Clinic by
This book explores previously unexamined overlaps between the poetic imagination and the medical mind. It shows how appreciation of poetry can help us to engage with medicine in more intense ways based on 'de-familiarising' old habits and bringing poetic forms of 'close reading' to the clinic.　 　 Bleakley and Neilson carry out an extensive critical examination of the well-established practices of narrative medicine to show that non-narrative, lyrical poetry does different kind of work, previously unexamined, such as place eclipsing time. They articulate a groundbreaking 'lyrical medicine' that promotes aesthetic, ethical and political practices as well as noting the often-concealed metaphor cache of biomedicine. Demonstrating that ambiguity is a key resource in both poetry and medicine, the authors anatomise poetic and medical practices as forms of extended and situated cognition, grounded in close readings of singular contexts. They illustrate structural correspondences between poetic diction and clinical thinking, such as use of sound and metaphor. 　 　 This provocative examination of the meaningful overlap between poetic and clinical work is an essential read for researchers and practitioners interested in extending the reach of medical and health humanities, narrative medicine, medical education and English literature. 　
ISBN: 1003194400Publication Date: 2021-12-30
- JAMA: Poetry and Medicine A collection of poems published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
- Bird-Understander Bird-Understander is a poem written by Craig Arnold. It is about the expectations and limitations of caregiving.
