A Call for Narrative: The Patient's Story and Anesthesia Training

Abstract

Narrative plays a key role in medical education and knowledge, via the case history, the case presentation, or even the patient's chart. Hospitalization for elective surgery provides the structure for a discrete story in a person's life. The details make the story unique for each patient. By analyzing themes and content of narratives obtained from patients and medical trainees, the reader gains insight into the realms of patients' and residents' lives. We believe that even anesthesiologists, who work at the procedure-oriented end of the spectrum of patient care, can benefit from a narrative approach to understanding the patient's perspective. An unanticipated reward of the study is the therapeutic benefit that some of the patients express in their narratives. Patients write that they hope future patients will benefit ("Use this information to the betterment of anyone in need & etc" [patient 15]) or physicians and nurses will improve their interactive skills (patient 09). Perhaps physicians may share the rewards of narrative creation that patient 10 expresses when he triumphantly exclaims, "EUREKA!!! ... I hope you learn something from it (as I have from remembering it)." Patients can provide medical personnel not only with signs and symptoms, but also with insight into the human aspects of the medical process. Reading or writing narratives about such processes may enhance physicians' understanding of their patients' experiences.