Marc Pierson's Community Weblog

My invaluable assistant, Jill Hickok, told me about an NPR presentation on the use of story telling in medicine. We are trying to do something similar in Whatcom County to heighten the awareness and understanding of the relational aspects of medicine, especially chronic conditions.

We are coming to believe that among all the change and stresses of medicine the experience is loosing it's meaning for some providers and patients. Focusing on people and their stories is one way to combat the cynicism fostered by a broken or non-existent system of care. Most of us came into the profession because of a love people and a deep interest in people and their stories.

Here is a link to the NPR piece: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1480863   (I hope their RealPlayer download works better for you than it did for me. May be a firewall issue. I will try it at home tonight.)

Here is a link to a piece on the physician that is spearheading the effort, Rita Charon, M.D., Ph.D.

http://litsite.alaska.edu/uaa/healing/medicine.html

Here is a link to a biosketch on Dr. Charon. http://www.medinfo.ufl.edu/other/histmed/charon.html

I hope to learn more about this approach.

I have heard Dr. Rachel Remen talk about the power of story telling.  I find stories more transformative than powerpoint and analytical data. Perhaps it is because they contain what we find most interesting and important–other people.

Here are links to her work: http://www.rachelremen.com/; http://www.meaninginmedicine.org/about_fmm.html; http://www.almanacnews.com/morgue/2000/2000_04_12.hfa.html.