Literature and Medicine: Contributions to Clinical Practice

TLDR

Literature and medicine, introduced to U.S. medical schools in 1972, provides methods and texts that help physicians develop skills in the human dimensions of medical practice. The study of literature in medical education aims to teach concrete lessons about the lives of sick people, reveal the power and implications of medical practice, deepen understanding of patients’ stories and physicians’ personal stakes, enhance narrative ethics expertise, and offer new perspectives on the work and genres of medicine. Literature chosen from the traditional canon and contemporary, culturally diverse writers—including novels, short stories, poetry, and drama—conveys both concrete particularity and metaphorical richness of sick people’s predicaments and the challenges and rewards faced by physicians.

Abstract

Introduced to U.S. medical schools in 1972, the field of literature and medicine contributes methods and texts that help physicians develop skills in the human dimensions of medical practice. Five broad goals are met by including the study of literature in medical education: 1) Literary accounts of illness can teach physicians concrete and powerful lessons about the lives of sick people; 2) great works of fiction about medicine enable physicians to recognize the power and implications of what they do; 3) through the study of narrative, the physician can better understand patients' stories of sickness and his or her own personal stake in medical practice; 4) literary study contributes to physicians' expertise in narrative ethics; and 5) literary theory offers new perspectives on the work and the genres of medicine. Particular texts and methods have been found to be well suited to the fulfillment of each of these goals. Chosen from the traditional literary canon and from among the works of contemporary and culturally diverse writers, novels, short stories, poetry, and drama can convey both the concrete particularity and the metaphorical richness of the predicaments of sick people and the challenges and rewards offered to their physicians. In more than 20 years of teaching literature to medical students and physicians, practitioners of literature and medicine have clarified its conceptual frameworks and have identified the means by which its studies strengthen the human competencies of doctoring, which are a central feature of the art of medicine.