Dementia as a Critical Lens on the Role of Narrative in Medical Training and Practice

Abstract

Narrative holds an important place within medicine and medical education, but an uncritical use of narrative can have troubling consequences for the care of patients who have limited or no capacity for self-narration, such as those living with dementia. We argue that the guiding principles in the use of narrative within medicine and medical education must be inclusivity and opportunity. We illustrate how medical training can benefit from a more inclusive definition of narrative, and we present a selection of innovative approaches to narrative coming out of literary studies, narrative gerontology, and medical and health humanities that focus on metaphor, embodied selfhood, and critical methods for teaching narrative in medical education. These approaches provide opportunities for medical and health humanities to shape the use of narrative in clinical spaces in critical ways that include and empower more individuals, including medical professionals.