Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness

by Rita Charon

Overview

Narrative medicine has emerged in response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient. Generated from a confluence of sources including humanities and medicine, primary care medicine, narratology, and the study of doctor-patient relationships, narrative medicine is medicine practiced with the competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness. By placing events in temporal order, with beginnings, middles, and ends, and by establishing connections among things using metaphor and figural language, narrative medicine helps doctors to recognize patients and diseases, convey knowledge, accompany patients through the ordeals of illness—and according to Rita Charon, can ultimately lead to more humane, ethical, and effective health care.
Trained in medicine and in literary studies, Rita Charon is a pioneer of and authority on the emerging field of narrative medicine. In this important and long-awaited book she provides a comprehensive and systematic introduction to the conceptual principles underlying narrative medicine, as well as a practical guide for implementing narrative methods in health care. A true milestone in the field, it will interest general readers, and experts in medicine and humanities, and literary theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195340228
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/29/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

Table of Contents

I. What is Narrative Medicine1. The Sources of Narrative Medicine2. Bridging Health Care's Divides3. Narrative Features of MedicineII. Narratives of Illness4. Telling One's Life5. The Patient, the Body, and the SelfIII. Developing Narrative Competence6. Close Reading7. Attention, Representation, and Affiliation8. The Parallel ChartIV. Dividends of Narrative Medicine9. Bearing Witness10. The Bioethics of Narrative Medicine11. A Narrative Vision for Health CareReferencesIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Narrative Medicine is practical enough to be benefiical to the clinician, yet sufficiently theoretical to serve as a seminal text in the field. Even master clinicians can gain from the knowledge and skills presented here. Charon has written an inspired and inspiring book; and, in her stories of patients and studetns, she is a role model for us all."—Perspectives

"This is a great book...Well done."—Doody's, a 5 star review

"Rita Charon addresses such issues in her most-welcome book, Narrative Medicine: Honoring Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness, a "primer," as she calls it, for the emergent field of "narrative medicine" that she has helped define. The book combines theory-drawn from literary studies, philosophy, anthropology, psychotherapy- and rich narratives from her own patients' and students' lives. It is a compelling mix, backed by the unusual authority of a physician who is also a literary scholar."—Perspectives

"A compelling mix, backed by the unusual authority of a physician who is also a literary scholar."—Lancet

From the Publisher