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VOL.19, NO.8
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5 0 AUGUST 2022
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How stories help doctors, patients
Narrative medicine, Small explained in an interview with the Beacon, “looks at how a patient speaks of a place in the context of stories — the stories in literary works, in poems, in paintings; the stories that the patients tell the doctors, the stories the doctors share with each other about their patients, the stories the doctors tell themselves about their work.” In 2000, a New York physician and literary scholar first popularized the term narrative medicine, a century-old idea. Dr. Rita Charon went on to found the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University.
L E I S U R E & T R AV E L
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Lauren Small and Ben Oldfield established a program in 2014 at Johns Hopkins for doctors, nurses and social workers to reflect on their patients’ stories. The weekly program, AfterWards, seeks “to illuminate stories of healing for the healers.”
A basic premise of narrative medicine, say the experts, is that patient accounts are similar to stories in literature, with a plot, characters (patients, family, friends, enemies, doctors, nurses, etc.), and metaphors. The experts say narrative medicine “aims not only to validate the experience of the patient, but also to encourage creativity and self-reflection in the physician.” In other words, doctors and patients should find the time and the ways to relate
to one another on a more human level. “Art and literature reflect the human spirit,” Small said. “By engaging in reflection on art or literature, clinicians reconnect with their own humanity and the humanity of their patients. They are reminded to consider their patients as whole people, not just a disease. “Narrative medicine reminds doctors to consider their patients’ lives and stories — See SMALL, page 20
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JERI TIDWELL PHOTOGRAPHY
What is narrative medicine?
PHOTO BY CHRIS MYERS PHOTOGRAPHY
By Robert Friedman In a conference room at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, a group of doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists and other crucial caregivers take time out of their day to listen to a poem by W. H. Auden. The poem, “Surgical Ward,” is often recited by Lauren Small, a novelist, essayist, editor, teacher and assistant professor of pediatrics at Hopkins. The reading is part of AfterWards — as in hospital wards — a monthly literary get-together devised in 2014 by Small and Dr. Benjamin Oldfield, and based on what is known as narrative medicine, a voluntary program meant to “humanize” the doctor-patient relationship. Too often, Small noted, a visit to the doctor today is a quick in-and-out affair. “Doctors are too busy, but they have to be reminded that patients are people, not just the disease,” she said. AfterWards has been described as “a commitment by medical caregivers to understanding patients’ lives” through the reading and telling of stories, both literary and personal.
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