Health Notes

Narrative Medicine

By Connie Mitchell

Doctors are naturally adept at science. And for a long time, the science of medicine was the only way many physicians approached their profession. But that’s changing as more medical professionals recognize and appreciate the importance of “narrative medicine.”

A 2001 article from the Journal of the American Medical Association defined narrative medicine as “a model for humane and effective medical practice. Adopting methods such as close reading of literature and reflective writing allows narrative medicine to examine and illuminate four of medicine’s central narrative situations: physician and patient, physician and self, physician and colleagues, and physicians and society. 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.”

Craig Pearson, a student in the Washington University Medical Scientist Training Program, also known as the M.D./Ph.D. Program, worked with classmates to organize a series of reading groups and dinner discussions during his first two years of medical school. Participants would discuss books, articles and poems that touched on their work in the medical field. The casual gatherings evolved into the medical school’s Narrative Medicine Interest Group, which offers opportunities for future and current doctors to explore reading and writing in the narrative medicine space.

“In some ways, narrative medicine is still sort of a nebulous field,” says Pearson, who plans to specialize in psychiatry. “There’s a growing body of academic scholarship that defines it as the use and study of narratives in clinical practice or research, and that’s such a broad umbrella. And so you get this tribe of people who are interested in narrative and storytelling in their own experience and in those of the people they care for.”

Pearson’s own interest in the humanities led him to take time mid-doctoral program to pursue a master’s degree in fiction writing, which he will earn this year before completing his doctoral studies next year. “I always enjoyed talking with my classmates and asking questions that went beyond the scope of our lecture-based medical training,” he says.

The COVID-19 pandemic spawned a trove of narratives from health care providers and patients. Pearson worked with others at Washington University to create “Grounded: The Pandemic Archive,” a digital time capsule that combines images and audio recordings. Funded by a grant from the New York-based Mellon Foundation, the project is continuing and becoming more community-centered.

The project website states: “Our goal is to explore how individuals – particularly those hardest hit by the pandemic – are using creative outlets to resist injustice, foster healing, challenge systemic discrimination and cope with COVID-19. We are working to imagine a more just future through different storytelling tools and tactics.”

Pearson says that “just learning the vocabulary of empathy and inclusion is meaningful. The narrative mindset cares about how you talk to people and how you communicate. It can really change the way people feel they’ve been treated in a medical context.”

Washington University School of Medicine, 660 S. Euclid Ave., St. Louis, medicine.wustl.edu

Grounded: The Pandemic Archive, groundedarchive.com