Storytelling as Healing in Medicine, by Cecilia Simon

Book Reviews Cecilia Simon Photo by Michael Gaida / Pixabay “Health is whatever works and for how long.” This phrase was announced to our literature and medicine class the first week of the fall 2019 semester. Dr. Ronald Schleifer, the instructor, used this definition of health to set the stage for what would be a semester-long study and discussion of the ways in which medicine works in our lives. The collaborative work that we read to do such a task was Literature and Medicine: A Practical and Pedagogical Guide (Palgrave, 2019), co-authored by Professor Schleifer himself and Doctor Jerry Vannatta. Based on a series of medical narratives, physicians’ reflections, and even the shortest poem about a little red wheelbarrow, this book illustrates the importance of an often-forgotten aspect of health care: the patient-doctor relationship. An illuminating and diverse set of novels and short stories within this guide reveals the everyday implications of medicine, in both the social and physical sense. Moreover, Schleifer and Vannatta’s compilation of these stories, along with their interviews and discussions with some of the authors themselves, offer not only clinical insight into the feelings and temperaments of physicians but personal vignettes of patients who get to tell the other side of the story. A cross-indexing of literature, culture, and medicine, this work aims to inspire current health-care professionals, students, and the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'

[ World Literature Today | 2020-01-22 16:01:00 UTC ]

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