Narrative based medicine: Stories we hear and stories we tell: analysing talk in clinical practice

BMJ 1999;318:186-188 ( 16 January )

Education and debate

Narrative based medicine

Stories we hear and stories we tell: analysing talk in clinical practice

This is the third in a series of five articles on narrative based medicine

Glyn Elwyn, senior lecturer, ^a Richard Gwyn, research coordinator. ^b

^a University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff CF4 4XN, ^b Centre for Language and Communication Research, University of Wales, Cardiff CF1 3XB

Correspondence to: Dr Elwyn ElwynG@cf.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Even at its scientific best, medicine is always a social act.¹

For all the science that underpins clinical practice, practitioners and patients make sense of the world by way of stories. ² ³ Even the most evidence crazed doctors have to translate theirperception of "biostatistical truths" into accounts that makesense to others. Studies of the consultation process, which havelargely taken place in primary care, have focused on the structureof the meeting from greeting to closure. ⁴ ⁵ The conceptsof doctor centredness or patient centredness are described⁶and measured⁷; these concepts undoubtedly have a profound influenceon professional practice.⁸ These observations have led to anongoing exploration of the effect that communication styles haveon both patient satisfaction and clinical outcome.⁹

But there is much more depth to be explored in the process of communication, and the tools normally used are insufficientto examine the layers of meaning that . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

StumbleUpon Add to Technorati

Technorati What's this?

Relevant Article

Informed consent and palliative chemotherapy: Daniel F Munday and E Jane Maher
BMJ 2008 337: a868. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

Munday, D. F, Maher, E J. (2008). Informed consent and palliative chemotherapy. BMJ 337: a868-a868 [Full text]
Raholm, M.-B. (2008). Uncovering the Ethics of Suffering Using a Narrative Approach. Nurs Ethics 15: 62-72 [Abstract]
Watson, S. (2007). An extraordinary moment: The healing power of stories. cfp 53: 1283-1287 [Full text]
Rosenblatt, L (2006). Being the monster: women's narratives of body and self after treatment for breast cancer. Med. Humanities 32: 53-56 [Abstract] [Full text]
Hight, C., Coleborne, C. (2006). Robert Winston's Superhuman: Spectacle, Surveillance and Patient Narrative. J Health Psychol 11: 233-245 [Abstract]
Hall, C., White, S. (2005). Looking Inside Professional Practice: Discourse, Narrative and Ethnographic Approaches to Social Work and Counselling. Qualitative Social Work 4: 379-390
Moss, B., Roberts, C. (2005). Explanations, explanations, explanations: how do patients with limited English construct narrative accounts in multi-lingual, multi-ethnic settings, and how can GPs interpret them?. Fam Pract 22: 412-418 [Abstract] [Full text]
Roberts, C. (2004). 'Only connect': the centrality of doctor-patient relationships in primary care. Fam Pract 21: 232-233 [Full text]
Di Gallo, A. (2003). While my Sister went to the Disco, I went to Hospital and Met the Doctors: Narrative as a Measure of the Psychological Integration of the Experience of Cancer in Childhood and Adolescence. Clin Child Psychol Psychiatry 8: 489-502 [Abstract]
Haidet, P., Paterniti, D. A. (2003). "Building" a History Rather Than "Taking" One: A Perspective on Information Sharing During the Medical Interview. Arch Intern Med 163: 1134-1140 [Abstract] [Full text]
McKay, S., Bonner, F. (2002). Evaluating Illness in Women's Magazines. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 21: 53-67 [Abstract]
WILLIAMS, D. D. R., GARNER, J. (2002). The case against the evidence': a different perspective on evidence-based medicine. Br. J. Psychiatry 180: 8-12 [Abstract] [Full text]
Roberts, C., Sarangi, S., Southgate, L., Wakeford, R., Wass, V., Esmail, A., May, C. (2000). Oral examinations---equal opportunities, ethnicity, and fairness in the MRCGP � Commentary: Oral exams---get them right or don't bother. BMJ 320: 370-375 [Full text]