Maria Vaccarella è Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Medical Humanities presso il Centre for the Humanities and Health – King’s College London, dove insegna anche per il Department of Comparative Literature. I suoi interessi di ricerca includono la Narrative Medicine, i Cultural Studies of Medicine e i Critical Disability Studies.
Q. What are Humanities for Health and Narrative Medicine now, in 2015, in short?
M.V. I like to think of the Medical Humanities (yes, I’m using the possibly old-fashioned, but certainly most immediately recognizable term here) as an inter-disciplinary field to explore the complexities of human bodies, minds and suffering through analytical frameworks, derived from humanistic disciplines, while holding a critical perspective on medical practice and education. I see Narrative Medicine as a form of “applied Medical Humanities” that builds upon literary and linguistic studies to improve communication in clinical practice.
Q. Do you think that Narrative Medicine practice it’s important?
M.V. Of course! I also think that experienced, compassionate healthcare professionals do practice Narrative Medicine without labelling it as such… And that actually testifies even more to its significance in healthcare provision.
Q. Is there an epistemological shift necessary to move from Evidence Based Medicine to Narrative Medicine?
M.V. When I teach Medical Humanities, discussions among my students sometimes verge towards what I call “EBM bashing” and that’s wrong, and definitely not what I advocate. I’m not sure anything as dramatic as an epistemological shift is required here. Scholars often mention a merging of the two perspectives and, as utopian as it may sound, I’m very much in favour of it.
Q. Why should patients tell about their illnesses? Must we believe that stories are always true? And how should we behave with patients’ narratives?
M.V. Well, this prompts a bit of a provocative question: What turns a person into a patient, if not the telling of their illness narrative? And of course, that telling happens at different levels, and in some cases, scans and blood tests seem to “tell more” than a verbal description. The thing is that person’s illness experience is made up of all these symptoms, lab results, words, silences… It’s a composite (maybe, apparently contradictory) form of truth, or authenticity, if you prefer. That’s when the Humanities come in handy: when we face ambiguity and must learn to embrace it and proceed from there.
Q. Do you think that Medical Humanities and Narrative Medicine could be competence to learn already at the University?
M.V. Yes, definitely! And this is already happening in different nations with different modalities, and a few studies have demonstrated the positive impact of these courses on medical students.
Q. Could we think about moving from Narrative Medicine to a more “holistic” form of comprehension of illness, body-states, and health, so to come to Narrative Healthcare or Narrative Health Competence?
M.V. I believe the centrality of narrative in human interaction is unquestionable. What could be beneficial is the dismantling of overpathologizing attitudes to health issues in society at large.
