Narrative in healthcare: healing patients, practitioners, profession and community
JD Engel et al (2009) • Oxon: Radcliffe Medical Press
The sub-heading of this book is interesting as it implies the practitioners and profession are also unwell - or at least in need of some form of remedial and therapeutic intervention.
After reading the book, replete with references to social and philosophical theory, famous prose and literary accounts of individual patients' stories, the reader is more informed and inclined to change practice or the principles upon which practice is predicated.
Narrative-based books have become ubiquitous, their commonness and commonality often emphasising the discord felt by patient and staff alike. This book is perhaps the most scholarly of the recent publications and could be a difficult read for someone like me, not versed in the language of epistemological phenomenology (whatever that means).
The art of caring
However, through the use of salient examples, an interactive learning element and suggested further activities and reading in each chapter, the reader sees - and often feels - vivid patterns and paradigms of the care experience from a variety of perspectives.
Not all of the text is grounded in arcane theory and language - indeed some of the more powerful and resonant pieces reflected upon items such as the poem written by a first year medical student in response to his first cadaver or Tolstoy's fictional Ivan Ilyich as he died from cancer in an uncaring environment.
A book to get from the library if you value or enjoy the significance of story telling as applied to health care.