Moving Beyond the Doctor’s Perspective of the Patient’s Perspective

The emergence of narrative medicine has promoted reflective practices and story-telling as means of promoting compassion, building resiliency, and understanding the “patient” and “physician” as “persons.” However, though some narrative medicine pieces describe patients’ experiences, the narrative of the patient is usually told by physicians, producing a second-hand facsimile of the patient’s lived experience. Stories written by physicians may have their roots in patient encounters, but are filtered through the physician’s, rather than the patient’s, understanding of the world. This focus on patient stories told by physicians replicates traditional gaps in legitimacy between the voices of physicians and patients and maintains the locus of power with physicians and the health care system. This paper explores the ways in which well-meaning physicians aiming to elevate patients’ stories frequently fall short, and what we can do to better elevate patients’ voices on the wards, in clinics, and in the medical literature. Stories about patients are important to help clinicians and trainees develop and practice compassionate person-centered care; stories written by patients on topics and with orientations of their choosing are currently lacking, and, we argue, even more important.