Abstract:

In this experiential webinar participants will go through a narrative medicine exercise followed by a discussion about its principles and practice. Narrative medicine as a discipline started 20 years ago By Rita Charon, MD, PhD and colleagues from Columbia University as an interdisciplinary healthcare team initiative to facilitate listening to patients in a qualitatively different way by attending to their unique “illness narratives.” 

In narrative workshops we discuss a piece of art – short texts, graphic arts, and music – to develop “radical listening” skills. This is the act of mindful listening to how the art resonates with us. We listen to individual interpretations without interruption and with an open mind in order to fully absorb and process what each of us is saying.

Narrative medicine uses the arts as a surrogate for human contact and parallels how we learn through simulation, for it is in the arts and patient simulation that we grapple with the complicated nature of the human condition from a safe remove. In this webinar participants will take part in a short narrative medicine exercise to practice radical listening by:

1. Learning the narrative medicine community guidelines of: creating a safe learning space, coming to the workshops with humility and an open mind, and listening mindfully to what is being said.
2. Doing a “close reading” of a short text, and then discussing and listening to individual interpretations.
3. Doing a reflective writing exercise, andBeing debriefed on the narrative medicine experience with an opportunity to ask questions about the process.

Additional Presenter: Virginia Drda, BA

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will be able to define the term “narrative medicine.
2. Participants will be able to define “radical listening”.
3. Participants will be able to define “close reading”.