Dr. Charon's Narrative Medicine

When asked what trait a physician bears in the 21st century, most would agree with compassion. Pierre Elias author of the narrative essay, “Insensible Losses: When The Medical Community Forgets The Family”, argues that physicians may be compassionate when it comes to their patients, but “lack a systematic approach to communicating with families when a patient’s health deteriorates unexpectedly, requiring a change in care providers” (Elias 707). Pierre Elias is a medical student from Duke University. He is nearing the end of his clinical rotations when he is forced by his inner moral conscience to deliver difficult news to a patient’s family whom no other physician makes time for.

The video presented the ethics and boundaries and factors that affect those boundaries such as addiction, abuse, absent role models, and patients assuming the professional shares the same feelings as he or she does. Then the video discusses issues the doctor may incur such as “special treatment” of patients, time management, poor awareness of feelings, and the response to the patient.

In the novel, No Apparent Distress: A Doctor’s Coming-of-Age on the Front Lines of American Medicine by Dr. Rachel Pearson, the author, Dr. Pearson, encounters several patients and experiences several personal challenges that builds her role as a doctor and helps her realize the social injustices in the healthcare system. With the personal encounters she faces with her patients, her family and her peers, Dr. Pearson learns that there are several flaws in the healthcare system that is beyond the doctor’s power to fix. She also learns that the education she receives progressively builds as she meets new patients and learns about their individual cases. She begins to understand that the nature of her education is surprising because one cannot fully understand something unless they have experienced it. Consequently, Dr.

First, the relationship between a doctor and patient is a valuable asset in today’s medical environment. In this case, Merry didn’t understand that her diagnosis was worsening after refusing treatment, her autonomy was to have control of her own life decisions. As a result, Merry’s family chose to deny

They diligently studied and worked their way through college, medical school, residency, and fellowship programs. Frequently, I enjoyed their anecdotes about their experiences at the hospital, ranging from their interactions with patients to their diagnoses of rare pathologies. More recently, I had the privilege of shadowing them at the Cultural Cup Clinic, a free clinic for the underserved. There, I witnessed some remarkable interactions between patients and physicians. What most captured my attention was the altruism of the physicians, who would go to extraordinary lengths to provide the best possible care for their patients.

After reading and listening to Red’s story, the first course outcome that, I would choose is CO2 Discuss effective communication techniques with patients, families, and the interprofessional team in the care of older adults. Throughout Red’s story he had mention on several different occasions that he had not been following his doctor’s instructions in regards to his management of his diabetes by not taking his insulin on the day that he was not feeling well and not eating much, and had not taken his antibiotics as prescribed for the sore on his foot, therefore his foot continued to worsen. I would want to discuss with Red and his family the importance of managing his diabetes and by not doing could lead to other medical complication, such as,

Medicine is a science of healing, but also an art. It takes intelligence in the sciences as well as precise skill in the art of medicine to heal successfully. In the Hippocratic Oath, Hippocrates highlights the importance of passing on the tradition of practicing medicine, maintaining respect for patients, and preserving humility within themselves. Modern day practice of this oath involve patient’s stories. Rita Charon in her article “What to do with Stories? The sciences of Narrative Medicine,” explores narrative writing and how to use it as a tool in healing patients. While Charon focuses on the writing of these stories, Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal reflects on how to make more meaningful endings out of the stories of patients who

A doctor’s mind and heart are very much involved in the patient’s road to recovery. Evidence in support of this statement is shown in William Carlos William poem “ The Red Wheelbarrow, and his essay “The Practice.” Also, in Jack Coulehan poems “The Man with Stars Inside Him, The Six Hundred Pound Man,” and the article “What’s a good doctor and how do you make one?” Individually, each reading and poem has expressed doctor’s emotions with their patients, and what characteristics have guided them into becoming a good doctor. The readings are a representation of how doctors are in fact remorseful when it comes to their patients. While reading these articles, I realize that doctors have been restricted to how much emotion they are allowed to show. All doctors have their weaknesses and their strengths, and they should be vocal about them especially when it comes to treating their patients.

Contrary to the belief that medicine should be solely clinical in order to preserve professionalism, narrative medicine is rapidly growing in the medical world and opposes clinical medicine by incorporating feelings and connections. Narrative medicine is the idea that doctors should be empathetic and must learn their patient’s story to build bonds that assist in curing the patient of illness, while supporting them mentally and emotionally. Rita Charon, a distinguished physician and professor at Columbia University, states “narrative medicine proposes an ideal of care and provides the conceptual and practical mean to strive toward that idea” (Charon). Medicine is often a difficult puzzle to solve, but being a genuine, caring human being is not. In his heart gripping book, The Measure of Our Days, Jerome Groopman explores the patient physician relationship giving insightful knowledge on the decision making in diagnosis and in treatment of different patients, but more importantly being a benevolent person. One consistent piece in Groopman’s puzzle of medicine is compassion, as he promotes it in every aspect of his career because it helps the victims of illness and disease understand their ailments, accept their fate, all the while building trust with their physicians. In Groopman’s retelling of his and his patient’s intertwined quest for cures and treatments, he exhibits the necessity of narrative medicine’s transgression into medicine for both physicians and patients.

The doctor-patient relationship always has been and will remain an essential basis of care, in which high quality information is gathered and procedures are made as well as provided. This relationship is a critical foundation to medical ethics that all doctors should attempt to follow and live by. Patients must also have confidence in their physicians to trust the solutions and work around created to counter act certain illnesses and disease. Doctor-patient relationships can directly be observed in both the stories and poems of Dr. William Carlos Williams as well as in the clinical tales of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Both of these doctors have very similar and diverse relationships with multiple patients

Doctor’s Diaries showed the difficult and challenging life of doctors and how they can affect the doctor’s personal life and professional job. While watching the video, there were two occurrences that stood out to me the most. The first example was the emotional connection a doctor can have with a patient, and the second example was the difficulty of getting patients to open up to the doctors

In the health care system, a multitude of errors occurs on a daily basis. Doctors, nurses, orderly’s, etc., everyone in health care settings has responsibilities that warrant careful attention. This was exhibited in the case study titled ‘An Extended Stay’. In this case study, we are introduced to a middle-aged man in his 60s named Mr. Stanley Londborg. He presented with several health conditions, including a seizure disorder, hypertension (also known as high blood pressure), and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Londborg was no stranger to the hospital and was known fairly well by faculty members. Londborg paid a visit to the Emergency Room at the hospital complaining of wheezing and breathing complications. The physician that examined Mr. Londborg yielded his symptoms as an acute worsening of

A twist on the "patient's perspective" approach is to describe a time when medicine failed to save or heal someone close to you. The purpose of this tactic would not of course be to rail against the medical profession, but rather to show how a disappointing loss inspired you to join the struggle against disease and sickness.

In a hot and sunny morning of October, the road led me to a rural community located miles away from Santo Domingo. A few meters from Haina riverside, the place in which I would spend a year far away from home for the first time in my life. I was 23, recently graduated from medical school, continuing my journey of helping people through one of the most honorable and rewarding arts, medicine. The duty: being the primary care physician of La Pared, an underserved community. I remember my supervisor asking if I was up to the task, given my youth and lack of experience.

Every person is shaped by his/her life experiences and life history. As a result, one’s social, and in this context, medical, situation is highly contingent on the different life experiences a patient has been exposed to. As C. Wright Mills coined the term, Sociological Imagination, MD students today should abide by his sentiment in placing the individual self apart from the typical and habitual patterns in a given society. One must step out of his/her own bubble to see the world for greater than what they are constrained to. The MD students should be able to value the importance placed on the social aspects of health and diseases, for it is true that what is considered an illness in one society, may be seen as a blessing in another. One must value the patient’s perspectives according to their life history. It all comes down to context. For example, today’s modern world is so technologically advanced that one may be able to go online “WebMD” to evaluate his/her symptoms to help them better understand the body’s deficits. However, in a different context, perhaps 200 years ago, the individual might not have had all the resources available to him/her and this might have impacted the individual’s health outcomes. Time is not the only cue to context. When looking at different parts of the world, even within the same country or state, people’s lives differ in many sorts of ways. Perhaps a child of a low income family needing to work in unstable work environment, while the