Ronald Schleifer - Literature and Medicine: A Practical and Pedagogical Guide

Ronald Schleifer

Jerry B. Vannatta

Literature and Medicine: A Practical and Pedagogical Guide is a book that grows out of more than 18 years of teaching and collaboration between the authors, Professor Ronald Schleifer , a George Lynn Cross Distinguished Research Professor of twentieth-century literature and culture , literary aesthetics, and semiotics at the University of Oklahoma, and Dr. Jerry Vannatta , a David Ross Boyd Professor of Internal Medicine (retired), former Executive Dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine with a long career as a practicing physician, a researcher, and an award-winning classroom professor. The goals for this bookas they have been for authors classes for pre-med and medical students, and for their workshops for practicing physicians and healthcare professionalsare very specific. They are:

The goals of this text-anthology itself grow out of a generation of scholarly work by physicians, psychologists, anthropologists, and literary critics in the United States aimed at developing the ways that engagement with the humanities in general, and literature in particular, can create better and more fulfilled physicians and caretakers. As we note in our book, The Chief Concern of Medicine: The Integration of the Medical Humanities and Narrative Knowledgeinto Medical Practices (a book, like this text-anthology, greatly indebted to this generation of work),

by better physicians, we mean better diagnosticians in listening to and understanding the patients story; better and more fulfilled professionals in developing powerful relationships with patients; more sensitively responsible doctors in the actions of everyday practice; and, perhaps encompassing all of these, people who will bring greater care to those who come to them ailing or in fear or faced with terrible suffering. (2013: 2)

Literature and Medicine , like our earlier work, is based upon the assumption that storytelling and narrative are centrally important in the patient-physicianand, more generally, in the patient-caretakerrelationship. In her groundbreaking book, Narrative Medicine , Dr. Rita Charon eloquently describes the role of narrative understanding in healthcare as medicine practiced with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness that patients bring to physicians. She adds that

a medicine practiced with narrative competence will more ably recognize patients and diseases, convey knowledge and regard, join humbly with colleagues, and accompany patients and their families through the ordeals of illness. These capacities will lead to more humane, more ethical, and perhaps more effective care. (2006: vii)

In a similar fashion, in The Chief Concern of Medicine , we assume that through the practice, analysis, and discussion of narrative (and particularly of literary or art narratives) physiciansand, indeed, all of uscan become better at recognizing stories, comprehending their parts, rearranging them in new contexts, responding to them, and acting on the knowledge we have gained (2013: 1). And this, of course, is what healthcare providers do every daylisten to patients stories. It is the purpose of Literature and Medicine to contribute to the creation of practical pedagogical programs for this practice, analysis, and discussion in our colleges and medical schools.