Ever since people could first talk, we’ve told stories. Through storytelling, we are able to bring to life all of our experiences. Ultimately, that’s how we get to know one another: by sharing a little part of ourselves. So when we walk into a doctor’s office, why do we let our medical records do the talking for us?
By only letting our experiences be revealed through test results on paper, we leave out an important aspect of ourselves: the real life consequences of all those numbers displayed. To get the best treatment as quickly as possible, we need to initiate conversation with those we seek for help. This calls for verbally sharing our thoughts to our care providers so that they know exactly how we feel. Expressing ourselves enables our doctors to be proactive in leading interactive conversations and understanding our situations.
That being said, records have limits to what they can expose about us and our medical history. Only we have the power to humanize that clinical data. By sharing stories about our background, we place our doctors in a better position to offer us potential explanations for illness. In turn, they can better care for and respond to us because we have pinpointed our problems for them. With clear communication as the foundation, we can then begin to develop a beneficial patient-doctor relationship–one that, in the long run, will allow us to receive a successful treatment plan.
Now, just because we may think a symptom is negligible, doesn’t mean it’s harmless. In fact, patient self-diagnosis is highly discouraged by healthcare providers. Many times, patients who ignore feelings of discomfort are later surprised when they find out it was an indicator for a more serious illness.
Still, regardless of all the consequences staying silent brings, patients often refuse to communicate with their doctors. So now, the only way to break this silence is by educating each other and spreading the word, very much like storytelling.
Why would anyone want to tell stories in a medical environment when it’s supposed to be all science?
Well, stories are an essential part of the medical branch. They serve as a means of perceiving how scientific knowledge can be applied to individuals, in each distinct case. Narratives allow doctors to make diagnoses specific to each patient’s testimonies about their medical backgrounds. A doctor reading his patient’s health reports won’t be able to automatically tell the difference between the reports and the narrative if he has no ground to suspect anything more than what is being displayed in print. By sharing our stories, we enable doctors to see how the complexities of our symptoms match those of health risks, rare or common.
Image Source: Jupiterimages
Oftentimes, we get caught up hearing stories where tragedies might have been prevented. By reading case histories, this isn’t always transparent. If a doctor is able to hear a person’s individual experience, he is more apt to diagnose the particular case and prevent a disastrous, potentially life-threatening outcome. With patients that let papers speak for them, they might be set to a different fate than those who let their stories be known.
Every patient has a story to tell, and within each story lies hidden healing value for the physician who mines it. Medicine is essentially the miner’s craft, where scientific knowledge is carefully applied to individual patients for the purpose of yielding the best results. We must see doctors as the mediums between the problem and the solution. In order for them to come up with the most useful method for us to get better, we need to share what exactly is distressing us.
Human development, civilization, and society itself has progressed through the telling of stories. We can change the face of medicine and build healthy lives together if we communicate with our health providers. Otherwise, the solutions may be left undiscovered. This is where storytelling in medicine makes a difference in not just our lives, but in those of generations to come. If we support a healthcare system in which patients leave doctors to solve puzzles, medical practitioners might get lost in the way while we will be left to suffer the consequences.
So next time we pay our doctors a visit, let’s all talk! It might just end up saving our lives.
Feature Image Source: Doctor greeting patient by Vic
