Narrative Medicine in Education, Practice, and Interventions

This is a book with an ambitious goal—to encapsulate both the challenging and healing experiences of patients (from acute illness to addiction and recovery, and in settings ranging from cancer treatment to writing groups) and academic understandings of and influences on such experiences, while also taking into account the ways those two milieus are shaped by—and shape—healthcare as a global business. This business of healing, often though not always hospital-based, is depicted as one which inflects and is sculpted by narratives produced by patients. The questions Narratives in Medicine asks are field-encompassing, while the base assumptions its authors make—and the answers they give—are based on personal experience teaching and practicing at the University of Southern Denmark, Columbia University, the University of Oklahoma, and Rutgers University. It’s an approach that allows local, site-specific insights to flourish alongside global inquiry.—Rebecca M. Rosen; Assistant Professor of English at Murray State University The present anthology by Rasmussen, Mai and Hansen falls on the practical side as a set of analytical case studies that can be a “how-to” manual for NM scholars/practitioners. The contributors’ qualifications combine two or more specializations in (comparative) literature, ethics, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, IT, medicine and other aspects of health sciences and/or practice. Such breadth of scholarly viewpoints is one of the main advantages of the anthology, reflecting the hybrid nature of NM and also highlighting how each approach contributes uniquely to the sensitization of medical practitioners. It also offers a welcome variety of tone, with the more conversational humanities pieces alleviating the more cut-and-dried medical ones. - Revue LISA/LISA e-journal