Research Guides: Health Humanities: Narrative Medicine

What is Narrative Medicine?

"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. ... 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." (from https://hslmcmaster.libguides.com/voicesinhealthcare/narrative-medicine)

Narrative Medicine: A model for empathy, reflection, profession, and trust
Charon R. The patient-physician relationship. Narrative medicine: a model for empathy, reflection, profession, and trust. JAMA. 2001 Oct 17;286(15):1897-902. doi: 10.1001/jama.286.15.1897. PMID: 11597295.

More Resources

The Nocturnists - a medical storytelling podcast

The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine by Rita Charon; Sayantani DasGupta; Nellie Hermann; Craig Irvine; Eric R. Marcus; Edgar Rivera Colsn; Danielle Spencer; Maura Spiegel
Publication Date: 2016-11-04
Narrative medicine is a fresh discipline of health care that helps patients and health professionals to tell and listen to the complex and unique stories of illness. The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine expresses the collective experience and discoveries of the originators of the field and serves as a seminal text in the field. Arising at Columbia University in 2000 from roots in the humanities and patient-centered care, narrative medicine draws patients, doctors, nurses, therapists, and health activists together to re-imagine a health care based on trust and trustworthiness, humility, and mutual recognition. An overview of the book may be found at this link: https://rb.gy/7ewgxi
The Languages of Care in Narrative Medicine by Maria Giulia Marini
Publication Date: 2018-10-23
This book explains how narrative medicine can improve evidence based medicine (EBM), making it more effective and efficient, giving patients better quality of life and offering more satisfaction to all health care providers. It discusses not only the disease experienced by the person who is ill, but also focuses on the context and the culture, and investigates how narrative medicine can make other disciplines around the globe more applicable, less manipulative, and more "scientific". Only by integrating the narrative aspects, can EBM become more effective and efficient, with fewer uncured patients, more satisfied patients with a better quality of life, and satisfaction for all health care providers.
Creative Dialogues by Isabel Fernandes; Beecher Cecilia Martins; Amondio Reis; Zuzanna Sanches
ISBN: 9781443874489
Publication Date: 2015-04-01
This volume is the outcome of work done in the groundbreaking field of Narrative Medicine by an interdisciplinary research team based at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES) and devoted to the international project Narrative and Medicine since 2009. The articles and essays gathered here, heterogeneous as they may be (such is the natural outcome of research carried out across disciplines), are not only of high caliber when read individually, but also constitute an invaluable contribution to the larger field of Health Humanities, when taken as a collection.