Combining first-person narration, scholarly reflections, and advocacy, this volume features conversations with physician-scholars Rita Charon and Jonathan M. Metzl and provides a holistic view of the human interactions and structural forces that define healthcare today. The contributors afford us opportunities to reconsider health through a poetic and political lense and help us envision a more socially informed and just practice of medicine.

Virginia Woolf's daring essay on how illness transforms our perception, plus an essay by Woolf's mother from the caregiver's perspective: "Revelatory." — BooklistThis new publication of "On Being Ill" with "Notes from Sick Rooms" presents Virginia Woolf and her mother, Julia Stephen, in textual conversation for the first time in literary history. In the poignant and humorous essay "On Being Ill," Woolf observes that though illness is part of every human be...

A moving look at the challenges and triumphs of caregiving, told through candid literary accounts by more than 60 doctors, nurses, and other healersWhere It Hurts invites us to peer into the space between health and illness, life and death, through the voices of the people who work on medicine’s frontlines: doctors, nurses, EMTs, therapists, and more. In raw and revealing essays, stories, and poems, they share what it’s like to deal with difficult patients...

Narrative medicine is a fresh discipline of health care that helps patients and health professionals to tell and listen to the complex and unique stories of illness. The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine expresses the collective experience and discoveries of the originators of the field. Arising at Columbia University in 2000 from roots in the humanities and patient-centered care, narrative medicine draws patients, doctors, nurses, therapists, and health activists toge...

Narrative in Social Work Practice features first-person accounts by social workers who have successfully integrated narrative theory and approaches into their practice. Contributors describe innovative and effective interventions with a wide range of individuals, families, and groups facing a variety of life challenges. One author describes a family in crisis when a promising teenage girl suddenly takes to her bed for several years; another brings narrative practice to a Bronx tra...

Narrative in Social Work Practice features first-person accounts by social workers who have successfully integrated narrative theory and approaches into their practice. Contributors describe innovative and effective interventions with a wide range of individuals, families, and groups facing a variety of life challenges. One author describes a family in crisis when a promising teenage girl suddenly takes to her bed for several years; another brings narrative practice to a Bronx tra...

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 beg...

First published in 2002. The doctor patient relationship starts with a story. Doctors' notes, a patient's chart, the recommendations of ethics committees and insurance justifications all hinge on written and verbal narrative interaction. The practice of narrative profoundly affects decision making, patient health and treatment and the everyday practice of medicine. In this edited collection, the contributors provide conceptual foundations, practical guidelines and theoretical consideration...

Candid literary accounts by doctors, nurses, and other healers shed light on the intense challenges and triumphs of medical life, reflecting the resilience, ingenuity, and compassion they use to get by.In Where It Hurts, more than 60 doctors, nurses, therapists, EMTs, patient advocates, and other medical professionals offer a window into the space between health and illness, life and death as they share stories of difficult patients, life-changing diagnose...

How Doctors Think defines the nature and importance of clinical judgment. Although physicians make use of science, this book argues that medicine is not itself a science but rather an interpretive practice that relies on clinical reasoning. A physician looks at the patient's history along with the presenting physical signs and symptoms and juxtaposes these with clinical experience and empirical studies to construct a tentative account of the illness. How Doctors Think is ...

"Cathy Riessman is the leading figure in narrative research and her new book is a delight. Covering basic issues of transcription and research credibility as well as visual data and engagingly written, it is a goldmine for students and researchers alike. If we want to make narrative research serious and revealing, it is to this book that we should turn."—David Silverman, Professor Emeritus, Goldsmiths′ College, University of London*"*Narrative Methods for th...

This innovative book strips the concept of evidence-based practice back to basics using deconstructive analysis, so that readers can move towards a clearer understanding of it. The practitioner is guided through a number of case studies in which the authors examine how the concept of evidence-based practice has been used in a variety of clinical settings. Divided into three parts, the book provides a deconstruction of key texts related to evidence based practice, weaving together contempor...