Why did the company want to invest in narrative medicine studies?
Ours is a leading pharmaceutical company with a focus on pain therapies and focused research, has a vision of a pain-free world, within which we want to give a voice to the patient with chronic pain. Thanks to our digital platform Dimensione Sollievo, which is the first digital community dedicated to chronic pain in Italy, the patient can find strategies on social and on the Internet that can help provide relief in daily life. So, we thought that narrative medicine could be an innovative method for an ever-changing environment like social, and to deeply understand the patient’s perspective. The goal, for us, was also to identify the best strategies to stimulate collective storytelling and growth of our online community.
What were the benefits of investing in research projects in this area and how does the company use studies in narrative medicine?
Today’s world is constantly changing, and so narrative and language style are also changing very fast, people are communicating through different channels, including social media, and everything is faster, more concise, and more limited. Why, then, invest in narrative medicine projects? This methodology derives its strength from its particular vision and analysis of the choice and use of words, which retain their relevance. Thus, new skills can be developed in new contexts and used to learn more and more about patients and caregivers. Through this kind of analysis we can identify the strategy to stimulate more efficient narratives. In particular, in the Dimension Relief project, this method allowed us to solve the gap of fragmented and impersonal communication and we understood what to add to communication to the community and also how to do it. Now we have a deeper understanding, we can give more services and more support to those who are suffering, and we are also able to help the doctor by providing him or her with information to improve the patient journey.
What has emerged from the SOLLIEVO DIMENSION project that you want to remember and emphasize?
The aspect that emerges most is the cross-section of daily life that is very real and not mediated by other people and the willingness of affected people to get out of that situation of invisibility and misunderstanding. Patients with chronic pain may be people exhausted by pain or skeptical about possible recovery or better health; therefore, they seek out listening and information online because, in this way, they can vent and tell their stories even in a fragmented way, sometimes with little confidence in the future. Narrative medicine is crucial because it helps us understand their language, which can be rich in metaphors and nuance; this, in fact, can highlight a search for security, a willingness to share pain, and an attempt to find others affected by the same pain. Thus we left the patient free to express himself, making him feel welcomed and listened to. The issue of recognition of pain by specialists is another relevant issue. I would like to mention the importance of bringing to light and ensuring restitution to this pain.
Finally, this project emphasizes the importance of listening and opens for us a new phase of continuous, nonjudgmental improvement and sets us the goal, perhaps even more important, of bringing this aspect to the clinician’s gaze, succeeding in making visible a dimension that is often denied.
What suggestions would you make to those involved in narrative medicine to better disseminate this methodology?
What I would suggest in light also of the value of this project is to always seek a channel of communication that unites the narrative medicine expert with the layperson, to find that contaminated common ground that leads to greater knowledge and understanding. I believe in a development of narrative medicine becoming more and more a valuable means of communication. Our desire is to find different keys; we had hypothesized that narrative medicine could make an important contribution to this kind of 360-degree analysis, and not only did we receive confirmation of its value but this also went beyond our expectations.