Stories and the Art of Medicine

Very, very worth it to spend time reflecting how stories are central to the art of medicine. Reflection with an aim to, in the words of Dr. Ronan Kavanagh, ” soften[s] up the edges of the battle-weary medics”

I’ve been sharing my stories as a doctor and parent – interspersed among the health promotion/education – since I started the social media project and blog in 2018. I always saw the stories as separate or unimportant to my medical practice or indeed the health promotion goal of this project. Today, reframed my thinking: it was never separate and was always important: it was important for me to share those stories and important for those who heard/read those stories. We both learned from those stories. @suzannekovenMD noted today that a writer just starts writing and good writer is surprised by where the story goes. It struck me that she is very right: I started writing in 2018 and this year it ended up as a new medical practice! (2018-me would have been very surprised indeed.)