The January 24, 2019 Department of Internal Medicine’s 16th Annual Writing and Medicine Grand Rounds, “The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine: Is It Part of the Internist’s Mission?” was presented by guest speaker Rita Charon, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at Columbia University and founder and executive director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia.
Charon started by saying that she was in the presence of colleagues, acknowledging the work that Yale physicians have done in the field of narrative medicine as part of the Yale Internal Medicine Residency Writer’s Workshop.
Charon’s interactive talk featured the analysis of various paintings and photography. She shared the fundamentals of narrative medicine: attention, representation and affiliation and how internists might benefit from using the practice of narrative medicine in their practices to improve the healthcare experience. She stressed the importance of writing to ‘establish imagination and creativity within the heart of medicine.’
She showed a photograph of a European city, with many close cream-colored buildings in the foreground. The city was undistinguishable until the audience noticed in the left-hand corner of the photo stood the Eiffel Tower. Using this photo of Paris as an example of the current practice of medicine, she urged the audience to improve their capacity to ‘see.’
“In our medical zeal, we are often just looking at the Eiffel Tower. Is it possible for us to value the lives of patients besides their Eiffel Tower?” asked Charon.
To learn more about narrative medicine and watch yesterday’s Medical Grand Rounds, Yale faculty can review the video.
The Yale Internal Medicine Residency Writer’s Workshop is directed by Anna Reisman, MD and Lisa Sanders, MD, FACP. To learn more, visit Writers’ Workshop.