Life &Medicine Entropy | 03 Jan 2010
Learning to Listen
In the words of Carl Jung - “Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.”
At New York City’s Columbia University, students are experiencing a novel approach to medical training. Besides, the scientific charts they keep on patients, the students are writing about their encounters and emotional reactions in ordinary language. This program in “narrative medicine” includes lectures on medical ethics and guest lectures by writers such as Susan Sontag, but the core of the program is writing and reading from these parallel charts.
Pl care to read the feature by Gina Kolata in NYT .. This subject matter has always been close to my heart
Narrative Medicine
DR. RITA CHARON, professor of clinical medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, is well aware of the power of storytelling. She has a Ph.D. in English — training that changed her medical practice. Through literature, she learned how stories are built and told, and translated that to listening to, and better understanding, patients. She could let them tell their own stories without interruptions and see how people described their symptoms as part of the larger story of their life.
Dr. Charon was not the first to connect literature and medicine, but she has become the leading advocate of the emerging discipline known as narrative medicine, which aims to treat the whole person, not just the illness. The British Medical Journal and other professional publications have run articles on the approach, and medical schools have added writing seminars and reading groups.
Dr. Charon had spent several years teaching workshops on developing “narrative competence,” but she feared participants weren’t prepared enough to return to their schools to start programs. There was no comprehensive training in how to practice it.
She proposed something new to Columbia: a Master of Science in narrative medicine. The one-year program — two if pursued part time — began this fall at its School of Continuing Education.
“We hoped to get 8 to 10 people willing to pay the $50,000,” she says. The program ended up with 28 students, most of them midcareer professionals — doctors, nurses, social workers, lawyers, literary scholars. Others included recent college graduates headed toward medical school.
Courses this semester focus on philosophy, literary theory, psychoanalytic theory, autobiography and the close reading of literature involving experiences of illness. Dr. Charon says there’s no obvious job market for people with a Master’s degree in Narrative Medicine. But with new programs starting all the time, she says, “our graduates will be particularly well prepared to join such efforts.”
Some who enrolled, like Dr. Susan Ball, say they hope to become better doctors. Dr. Ball, associate professor of medicine at New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center, says she also would like to start a narrative medicine program at Cornell for resident physicians and older doctors.
By Gina Kolata © New York Times
I leave, with these thoughts for you to mediate & reflect..
It’s a human relationship, not a relationship between an expert and a problem.
I was certainly not trained to be a fellow human being.
- Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen
on 04 Jan 2010 at 6:41 pm 1.Parul said …
Very true.
We at times use narrative therapy or metaphor therapy where lots of use of stories relating to the clients life unfolds..its a superb experience.most simple ,relatable and effective..
on 05 Jan 2010 at 10:38 pm 2.Marie-Ancolie said …
“Some who enrolled, like Dr. Susan Ball, say they hope to become better doctors.”
and on another hand, human beings may we become better, with better behaviour, and “better” brain too.
Thanks for sharing this Ajay. Already bookmarked.