Doctor as Scribe
Thursday 11 October, 19.00-20.30
'Narrative medicine' describes the new move in medical health practice to revive the lost tradition of narrative in the teaching and practice of medicine and restore the diagnostic and therapeutic value of listening to, appreciating and interpreting patients' stories.
Besides the scientific charts they keep on patients, doctors are being encouraged to write about their encounters and express their emotional reactions. This is leading to new writing by doctors who are trying to restore a sense of meaning and healing that counters the dehumanising effects of technology, bureaucracy and specialisation in the healthcare system.
What can writing reveal that science can't? Can fiction ever be more powerful than fact?
Our guests came together to discuss the growing area of narrative medicine and the power of the story.
Speakers
Brian Hurwitz, GP and Professor of Medicine and the Arts, King's College London
Jonathan Cole, consultant and Professor in clinical neurosciences, Bournemouth and Southampton Universities
Facilitator
Alexander Linklater, Mind columnist, the 'Guardian'
This was the second in a series of four events exploring medicine and literature.
Other events:
• 'The Patient’s Tale', Thursday 13 September
• 'Books to Make You Better', Thursday 8 November
• 'Medblogs and Power of the Net, Thursday 13 December
Brian Hurwitz
I am D'Oyly Carte Professor of Medicine and the Arts at King's College London. My research encompasses clinical medicine, ethics, law, medical history and the role of narrative thinking in medical practice.
Jonathan Cole
I am an honorary senior lecturer in clinical neurosciences at the University of Southampton, a professor at the University of Bournemouth and a consultant in clinical neurophysiology in Poole and Salisbury Hospitals.
My academic research has focused on cognitive neuroscience. I also believe that a purely scientific approach to neurological impairment is inadequate. Therefore I have written a biography of one of my patients without movement sense, 'Pride and a Daily Marathon' (MIT Press 1995), which was the basis of an award-winning BBC2 Horizon - 'The Man Who Lost His Body' - as well as being part of Peter Brook's play, L'Homme Qui' ('the man who').
Alexander Linklater
I am a journalist who has conducted a year-long collaboration with my brother, who has suffered from acute manic depression for 20 years, piecing together his medical history from personal accounts, the experiences of others in the system, doctors, nurses, police, therapists and others.
What I have built up is a truly comprehensive narrative of my brother's story: the ultimate case history, together with an exploration of comparative methods of recording his mental illness.
I am the author of the stories in the Mind column in the 'Guardian Saturday' magazine, which precisely apply the patient's story to the psychiatric dilemma.