Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics

by Rita Charon (Editor), Martha Montello (Editor)

The doctor-patient relationship starts with a story. Doctors' notes, a patient's chart, and insurance justifications all hinge on written and verbal narrative interaction. Narrative practice profoundly affects medical decision-making, patient health and treatment, and the everyday practice of medicine. Doctors and researchers have also found that narrative provides clarity and insight into medical ethics. Bioethicists, medical students, and practicing health professionals are increasingly using narrative ethics to guide their work. In their original essays, the contributors to Stories Matter provide conceptual foundations, practical guidelines, and theoretical considerations central to the practice of narrative ethics. Through clinical case histories, they explore the methods physicians and ethicists use to make some of their most difficult moral decisions.

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Rita Charon is a physician, literary scholar and the founder and executive director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She currently practices as a general internist at the Associates in Internal Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and is a professor of clinical medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.
Charon is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness and co-editor of Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics and Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine.

Reviews

[TJ]

Principle Of Health Care Ethics
Philosophy 411