NBM2546-W - Illness Narratives and Patient Perspectives: Cultivating Deep Listening Skills
Program Description
The first step in better understanding stories of illness is to listen — and deep listening is an invaluable skill that can be developed with practice.
What does it mean to listen from a place of full presence? To be a witness to stories of suffering? The impact of deep listening in healthcare is profound: when patients feel truly heard, their experiences are validated, practitioners feel more connected to their patients, and opportunities for better care emerge.
When we learn how to listen, we can begin to identify different types of illness narratives and how to best respond to them with empathy, equanimity, and individualized care, as well as the space to sit with our own reactions.
In this workshop, we will explore what it means to really listen, and strengthen that muscle together in practice. Through close reading of literary and artistic texts, we will encounter different types of illness narratives from the patient perspective, seeing the patient as an expert in their experience and a collaborator in the healing process: key tenets of narrative-based medicine. We will also unpack what happens when we receive these stories of suffering.
This workshop also offers a supportive environment for empathic listening in which to write and share illness stories we have witnessed or our own personal illness narratives.
Program Outline
Prerequisites
https://narrativebasedmedicine.ca/offering/illness-narratives-and-patient-perspectives-cultivating-deep-listening-skills/Accrediting Body/Accrediting Bodies
- Under Review 0.0 hours