We have all had experiences with sickness, care giving, physicians, medical emergencies, hospitals, and doctors' offices. Health concerns are not solely the domain of medical students, physicians, or nurses - we all deal with our personal well-being and the health of our loved ones on a daily basis. Sometimes these health problems cause us to consider larger social and ethical issues. How do we respond and relate to such matters? In order to help both lay people and medical professionals consider various health care issues, East Carolina University's Brody School of Medicine developed a medical readers' theatre programme. Compiled for the first time in a single text, this book provides a vehicle for those who wish to engage in discussions among citizens and professionals about important, topical issues in contemporary medicine.

Narrative medicine has developed an identity already. Clinicians of many disciplines are being summoned to a practice that recognizes patients by receiving their accounts of self. Starting from different positions, the four authors have converged in a strong and shared commitment to narrative health care. They conceptualize narrative health care practices within frameworks derived from the social sciences and psychology, and, to a lesser degree, phenomenology and autobiographical theory. They relate the development of narrative medicine to relationship-centered care, patient-centered care, and complex responsive process of relating theory, positing that narrative medicine can help clinicians to develop the skills required to practice relationship-centered care. The book details - with exercises, resource texts, and abundant scholarly apparatus - how these skills can be developed and strengthened. This work will change health care. Because of its scholarly rigor, its multi-voiced sources, and its highly practical features (lists, activities, key ideas and key references, primary texts written by health care professionals and patients), this work will be a guide in the field for those who practice medicine or nursing or social work. The book establishes that there is a field to be practised, a need to practise it, and a means to develop the wherewithal to do so.

As students regularly read and perform these age-appropriate texts, they improve decoding, interpretation, fluency, and comprehension.

Literature and Medicine: A Practical and Pedagogical Guide is designed to introduce narrative medicine in medical humanities courses aimed at pre-medicine undergraduates and medical and healthcare students. With excerpts from short stories, novels, memoirs, and poems, the book guides students on the basic methods and concepts of the study of narrative. The book helps healthcare professionals to build a set of skills and knowledge central to the practice of medicine including an understanding of professionalism, building the patient-physician relationship, ethics of medical practice, the logic of diagnosis, recognizing mistakes in medical practice, and diversity of experience. In addition to analyzing and considering the literary texts, each chapter includes a vignette taken from clinical situations to help define and illustrate the chapter’s theme. Literature and Medicine illustrates the ways that engagement with the humanities in general, and literature in particular, can create better and more fulfilled physicians and caretakers.

This book is situated in the field of medical humanities, and the articles continue the dialogue between the disciplines of literature and medicine that was initiated in the 1970s and has continued with ebbs and flows since then. Recently, the need to renew that interdisciplinary dialogue between these two fields, which are both concerned with the human condition, has resurfaced in the face of institutional challenges, such as shrinking resources and the disappearance of many spaces devoted to the exchange of ideas between humanists and scientists. This volume presents cutting-edge research by scholars keen on not only maintaining but also enlivening that dialogue. They come from a variety of cultural, academic, and disciplinary backgrounds and their essays are organized in four thematic clusters: pedagogy, the mind-body connection, alterity, and medical practice.

Through the use of dramatic narratives, The Drama of DNA brings to life the complexities raised by the application of genomic technologies to health care and diagnosis. This creative, pedagogical approach shines a unique light on the ethical, psychosocial, and policy challenges that emerge as comprehensive sequencing of the human genome transitions from research to clinical medicine. Narrative genomics aims to enhance understanding of how we evaluate, process, and share genomic information, and to cultivate a deeper appreciation for difficult decisions encountered by health care professionals, bioethicists, families, and society as this technology reaches the bedside. This innovative book includes both original genomic plays and theatrical excerpts that illuminate the implications of genomic information and emerging technologies for physicians, scientists, counselors, patients, blood relatives, and society. In addition to the plays, the authors provide an analytical foundation to frame the many challenges that often arise.

Most medical schools in the US, Canada and UK now incorporate some form of arts and humanities-based teaching into their curricula. What happens in residency is another story. Most postgraduate programs do not continue the thread of such teaching although many residents would like to deepen their understanding of the medical humanities before they move into practice. The humanities emphasize "the human side of medicine", and can provide a counterpoint to the reductionism of evidence-based medicine and technological hubris for young doctors as they apply new knowledge and skills in ambiguous, real-life encounters with patients who are living with complicated health problems. Humanities-based education can help both sides of the relationship: programs are shown to reduce burnout and mental health issues in young physicians, and can also help learning practitioners grapple with the most difficult aspects of their craft: how does one persuade patients on a course of treatment, while respecting informed consent? How does one work with families? How does one listen to and treat patients exhibiting self-harm tendencies? Available research may demonstrate the efficacy of such exposures, but provide little practical advice or resources for setting up programs across specialty and sub-specialty disciplines. Health Humanities in Post-Graduate Medical Education will fill this gap in knowledge translation for the thousands of residency programs worldwide, allowing educators, supervisors, and residents themselves to create robust and educationally sound workshops, seminars, study groups, lecture series, research and arts-based projects, publications and events.