There is often a communication disconnect between medical caregivers, including doctors, nurses, therapists, and other assistive medical personnel, and the patient. While medical staff usually understand a patient’s symptoms, causes, and treatments, communicating this understanding to a patient using industry terminologies can lead to confusion and misunderstanding, and similarly, patients may lack the vocabulary to effectively communicate their experiences back to their caregivers. A new approach to communication must be bridged between these groups by individuals who have experience on both sides of the conversation.

Previous studies of doctors who end up in the role of the patient reveal how these individuals have a dual perspective on illness, combining their medical knowledge with their own personal medical experiences. Narratives, including autobiographical accounts and fictional stories, can help bridge the gap between experiential and academic knowledge of illness by expanding one’s limited perspective and accessing others’ points of view. Autobiographical and fictional narratives can both play a role in developing a more comprehensive understanding of illness beyond simply treating the disease. It is necessary to further examine the ethical and methodological underpinnings of narrative-based interventions in the education of healthcare professionals, practitioners, and patients.

Global Perspectives on Probing Narratives in Healthcare offers a multidisciplinary examination of theoretical and methodological uses of narratives in healthcare by bringing together medical aspects of healthcare and the study of arts and humanities. This illustrates specific applications of narratives in healthcare settings, including improvement of clinical skills, performance of the caring role, and self-efficacy for building a true partnership in the patient’s health journey through varied approaches, up-to-date tools, and resources that can be transferred and adapted to specific educational and healthcare contexts. This diverse collection of expert knowledge and experience is led by editors with over 20 years of teaching experience: Dr. Teresa Casal of the University of Lisbon, Portugal and Dr. Maria de Jesus Cabral of the University of Minho, Portugal. Expertise featured in this book includes contributions from some of the most prestigious academic institutions, including Columbia University in the United States, King’s College in the United Kingdom, University of Padua in Italy, and more.

It is an essential resource for healthcare and social science researchers, academics, advanced healthcare students, health training and education departments, healthcare practitioners and patients’ associations, and policymakers in healthcare who are looking to broaden their scope of understanding of the patient experience.

Coverage:

The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to:

Clinical Encounter
Empathy
Epistemic Awareness
Health Humanities
Hospital
Intersubjectivity
Medical Care
Narrative
Perspective
Phenomenology

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Editor/Author Biographies

Teresa Casal is Assistant Professor in English at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, and a researcher at the University of Lisbon Centre for Lisbon Studies (ULICES). She currently coordinates the interdisciplinary project in Medical Humanities, based at ULICES. Her main areas of research are narrative fiction and non-fiction, Irish Studies, and Medical Humanities. Her research focuses on how contemporary narrative fiction and creative non-fiction represent experiences of dislocation, loss, and illness. She is equally interested in the co-constructed nature of narratives and in the role of readers and listeners. She has published articles and book chapters in her areas of expertise and co-edited the literary anthology Contar (com) a Medicina [Counting on Medicine] (2015; ext. and revised eds. 2016 and 2018), Beyond Diagnosis: Relating Person to Patient, Patient to Person (2014), and Revisitar o Mito / Myths Revisited (2015). She has given various workshops and coordinated reading and writing groups for healthcare professionals.

Maria de Jesus Cabral is a Professor of French Literature and an integrated researcher at the Center for Humanist Studies (CEHUM), Group 2i (Identities and Intermedialities) at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal. She is also involved in teaching collaboration with the Medical School at the same university. Her research interests mainly revolve around Symbolist drama in the 19th century, comparative contexts, and the relationship between theatre and reading. Additionally, she co-founded the Literary Reading network LEA ! Reading in Europe Today and holds the honorary presidency of the APEF-Portuguese Association for French Studies. Her recent research aims to develop interdisciplinary theory and methods of reading, specifically in applying literary studies in medical training and practice, with an emphasis on ethical issues. Over the past years, she has created and taught numerous courses inspired by Narrative Medicine, both in Portugal and abroad (namely in Brazil and France). Presently, she serves as a member of the Ethics Committee for Research in Life and Health Sciences at the University of Minho.

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