this week's challenge

 

 

 

I just registered for the third annual conference on narrative medicine to be held at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in July. The title of this conference is "Narrative Medicine--A Cutting-Edge Approach to Healthcare."

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Narrative Medicine A Cutting-Edge Approach to Healthcare

·                     July 8–13, 2018

·                     Sunday–Friday: 5 nights

·                     Presenter: Natalie Goldberg

·                     Presenter: Nancy Slonim Aronie

·                     moderator: Lisa Weinert

·                     and more…

For caregivers, doctors, nurses, yoga teachers, writers, and anyone interested in personal narrative as a healing path to recovery.

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Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think of cutting edge approaches to health care I think of things like new and more effective antibiotics, high tech scans and digital something-or-others, and robotic microsurgical techniques. But storytelling?? Not so much.

Advances in medicine, whether having to do with the development of new drugs, tests, or methodologies, have to pass rigorous tests of their efficacy and safety before they are introduced into mainstream practice. This requires large scale randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies…which are notoriously difficult to design. Once you have demonstrated the safety and efficacy of, let’s say, a new drug, you still have to consider its cost effectiveness, applicability and acceptance rate. It’s surprising anything makes it through the process. But storytelling??

 

“I love storytelling.

It’s endlessly healing.”

~Ben Vereen~

 

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that the techniques taught in narrative medicine programs represent an advance in the practice of clinical medicine…that this method improves patient satisfaction, shortens hospital stays, decreases the number of readmissions, and in the long run, saves time and money. The numbers that prove these claims may be hard to get at. How can we measure the effect of patient satisfaction on healing? How would we code and bill for the time it takes to listen to the patient’s real (aka “whole”) story? Won’t it wreak havoc on our schedules to engage with our patients on their terms?

 

There is one way to find out:

 

Try it.

 

See if it works for you. Other people have. Other healthcare providers have reported not only improved patient satisfaction, but an improved sense of personal and professional fulfillment, a greater sense of dedication to and connection with their patients, better insight into the cause and clinical course of the patient’s illness and recovery. More accurate diagnosis. Fewer unnecessary tests. More effective interventions. All of which add up to better health care.

 

“Each time I told my story,

I lost a bit,

the smallest drop of pain.”

~Alice Sebold~

 

This is my challenge: look over your patient schedule for the week. Find a day when you have a little built in leeway. Pick a patient who is coming in for the first time. Or for a new problem. Ask this question:

 

“What do you think I should know

about your situation?”

 

Then just listen. Try not to interrupt, or redirect, or clarify what the patient says. There will be time for that later. He will tell you everything you need to know…what has happened, how it affects him, how he feels about it, and what he thinks about it. Bam!

 

This is the technique employed by Rita Charon, director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and chief contributor to the landmark text, The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine.

 

If the concept behind narrative medicine interests you, you might consider ordering a copy. Or…attending this year’s conference!

jan