NARRATIVE AND MEDICINE 2012

Title of the paper:

“Can you die from not being listened to?”

Abstract: This paper focuses on the relational nature of narrative, namely on the interdependence between speaking and listening, and the mutual responsibility that binds speaker and listener in a desirably non-authoritarian environment.

Though noting how relevant this issue is in every interpersonal and intercommunal relation, I shall specifically address its ethical implications within the medical setting. Drawing both on a personal testimony that instances how vital it is to listen, and on existing literature of patients’ stories and doctors’ reflections on the doctor-patient relationship, I argue that these contributions highlight the insufficiencies of inherited positivistic models and ingrained practices, and suggest a range of aspects that need to be included in medical training and clinical practice, starting with the awareness that the relational component of medicine is not merely critical to providing more humane medical care: it is also critical to providing better clinical care, starting with diagnosis.

I therefore propose that caring for the patient, and attending to the experience of illness and the prospect of death, requires that health care providers be trained to deal with the intra- and interpersonal implications of their own daily exposure to our common vulnerability, embodied creatures that we are.

Biographical information: I graduated in Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Oporto, Portugal, and hold a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from the University of Lisbon, where I am an Assistant Professor lecturing in English, Irish Studies, and Literary Translation. My research interests include fictional and non-fictional literary narrative, memory, the disabling effects of violence and the challenge they pose to our response-ability so as to find enabling modes for interpersonal and communal relations.