Narratives in Healthcare

Abstract

In this chapter, the narrative is defined and the elements of the narrative are elucidated. Three lenses through which one can view the role of narratives in healthcare are discussed. First, organizational narratives help to foster social capital in the organization and, therefore, contribute to the people aspect of the knowledge management initiative in the organization. Second, the recuperative and relationship building roles of illness narratives are described. Third, narratives from the practice of narrative medicine are explored. The chapter concludes by proposing four requirements for narratives to be effective, namely, effective listening skills, the availability of time and place for storytelling, and the codification of narratives. Keywords narrative; typology of narratives; storytelling 10.1 Introduction Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of the French Elle magazine. On 8 December 1995, he was struck with a massive stroke which damaged his brain stem, leaving him with the "locked-in syndrome." He was paralyzed from head to toe and could only communicate by blinking his left eye. With the help of a speech therapist, who introduced him to an alphabet in which the letters were ordered according to their frequencies in the French language, he dictated the book The Diving-Bell and The Butterfly to Claude Mandibel at Room 119 in the Naval Hospital at Berck-sur-Mer on the coast of the French Channel, where he was warded. In his book, Bauby described his initial hopes that he would very quickly recover his movement and speech. He filled his roving mind "with a thousand projects: a novel, travel, a play, marketing a fruit cocktail of his own invention," projects which he would undertake once he had regained his ability to walk and speak. Alas, as time progressed, he realized that this was not to be. He wrote about the devastation and despair upon discovering that he was a quadriplegic and 130