Stories of Sickness: Listening Narratively to Co-Construct New Understandings About Illness

Stories of Sickness:
Listening Narratively to Co-Construct New Understandings About Illness

Stories hold us together.  This is especially true of our personal and familial stories of illness, which is why it is so important that doctors know how to listen and respond to these narratives.  In this lecture, Dr. Shapiro will share how familial illness and physicians’ responses shaped her life.  She will then discuss how illness experiences disrupt and sometimes break our life narratives; why it can be so hard for doctors to really hear patients’ illness stories; how narrative listening can address this shortcoming; and how patients and doctors can learn to co-construct better stories together, in the process discovering mutual healing.