We’re excited about launching a Story World for patients and doctors. All the healing permutations, all through storytelling: Patients help themselves. Patients help other patients. Patients help doctors. Doctors help patients. Doctors help themselves. Doctors help other doctors. Here’s some science (and stories) about the power of stories to heal: In this New York Times article, Dr. Pauline Chen, M.D. cites a provocative new study by The Annals of Internal Medicine in suggesting that When Patients Tell Stories, Health May Improve. In health care, storytelling may have its greatest impact on patients who distrust the medical system or who have difficulty understanding or acting on health information because they may find personal narratives easier to digest. Stories may also help those patients who struggle with more “silent” chronic diseases, like diabetes or high blood pressure. In these cases, stories can help patients realize the importance of addressing a disease that has few obvious or immediate symptoms. There’s a separate thread that’s already triggered more than 60 comments - we’re learning so much from these crowd contributors. Rachel Naomi Remen, MD is a goddess of this area–for patients and healers alike. She has found not only that storytelling by patients is restorative, but storytelling by health care professionals mitigates burnout and helps find more meaning in the work we do. She started an elective course called “The Healer’s Art” at UCSF medical school that has now spread to more than 64 schools–half the country’s medical schools–as a means of helping medical students re-connect with the emotions and ideals that brought them to medical school in the first place. In a Boston Globe article, Dr. Annie Brewster, an urgent care doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, said she has become a better doctor by listening to patient stories. “I’ve realized that the illness process is just so much more than the physical process. It affects us all emotionally, spiritually, and in all our relationships,’’ said Brewster, who has launched a storytelling project in which she records stories of patients and their families and posts them online on WBUR’s CommonHealth blog. In a hospital study funded by the Robert Johnson Wood Foundation, 150 patients with uncontrolled blood pressure who watched personal stories ended up with blood pressure about 11 points lower than the 150 control group members, who watched generic health-related DVDs. “Part of the storytelling theory is the philosophy of homophily, which is that people identify with people who look like them, act like them and come from a similar culture, so we felt that was really important,” he said. “The spread of the people in the videos was such that most people in our patient population would be likely to identify with one or two of the people in there, so they’d be more likely to watch the video.”

We’re excited about launching a Story World for patients and doctors. All the healing permutations, all through storytelling:

  • Patients help themselves.
  • Patients help other patients.
  • Patients help doctors.
  • Doctors help patients.
  • Doctors help themselves.
  • Doctors help other doctors.

Here’s some science (and stories) about the power of stories to heal:

In this New York Times article, Dr. Pauline Chen, M.D. cites a provocative new study by The Annals of Internal Medicine in suggesting that When Patients Tell Stories, Health May Improve.

In health care, storytelling may have its greatest impact on patients who distrust the medical system or who have difficulty understanding or acting on health information because they may find personal narratives easier to digest. Stories may also help those patients who struggle with more “silent” chronic diseases, like diabetes or high blood pressure. In these cases, stories can help patients realize the importance of addressing a disease that has few obvious or immediate symptoms.

There’s a separate thread that’s already triggered more than 60 comments - we’re learning so much from these crowd contributors.

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD is a goddess of this area–for patients and healers alike. She has found not only that storytelling by patients is restorative, but storytelling by health care professionals mitigates burnout and helps find more meaning in the work we do.

She started an elective course called “The Healer’s Art” at UCSF medical school that has now spread to more than 64 schools–half the country’s medical schools–as a means of helping medical students re-connect with the emotions and ideals that brought them to medical school in the first place.

In a Boston Globe article, Dr. Annie Brewster, an urgent care doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, said she has become a better doctor by listening to patient stories.

“I’ve realized that the illness process is just so much more than the physical process. It affects us all emotionally, spiritually, and in all our relationships,’’ said Brewster, who has launched a storytelling project in which she records stories of patients and their families and posts them online on WBUR’s CommonHealth blog.

In a hospital study funded by the Robert Johnson Wood Foundation, 150 patients with uncontrolled blood pressure who watched personal stories ended up with blood pressure about 11 points lower than the 150 control group members, who watched generic health-related DVDs.

“Part of the storytelling theory is the philosophy of homophily, which is that people identify with people who look like them, act like them and come from a similar culture, so we felt that was really important,” he said. “The spread of the people in the videos was such that most people in our patient population would be likely to identify with one or two of the people in there, so they’d be more likely to watch the video.”

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