Using Narratives in Healthcare Communication

Narratives convey feelings and communicate ideas that the listener needs to hear. As such, they make powerful tools in all endeavors of human interaction. The use of narratives has been especially successful in educational settings. The time has come for the patient narrative to take back its rightful place after having been displaced in the name of managed care and more efficient use of clinic visits. Modern medicine needs to learn to integrate the compassion and empathy gleaned from a patient's narrative with the knowledge and integrity needed to alleviate the patient's suffering and pain.