Becca Quinn is a London based GP
It seems to me that the minute we step onto the path of General Practice that we enter into a landscape of people. A living, ever-morphing conglomeration of patient journeys that are illuminated or muted by the social structures that hold them. The pull of narrative helps us to navigate the complex currents of the consultation, and enables the clinician to meet the patient’s needs more effectively and efficiently simply because they understand the patient’s story, and the characters within them.
Yet our role as curious clinicians can stretch further. We can acknowledge the dynamic nature of patient’s stories by asking the right questions, and presenting the opportunity for patients to review their problem from a different angle, which may present in hitherto unnoticed ways forward.1
Using a narrative based approach can also enrich our own perspective and give us boldness to hold back from encasing patients in the tight algorithms that chronic disease management is often associated with. Here is a poem that seeks to reframe.
(Title:) Heart failure.
They said in passing, kindly,
‘Fluid on the lungs.’
I picture the translucent membranes of a fetus
and the smooth amniotic glide of organ within organ,
Safe and unhurried, pink and pumping.
I am none of those.
My chest treasures its spongy breaths that crackle
and creak to burst, while slowly, from feet up,
I grow only in heaviness and blue stretching.
Fluid suggests beauty my body does not possess;
an elasticity of being my soul craves.
O, Heart! You battle with courage, tired, brave muscle mine,
Fail me not today.
For tomorrow, I shall have a different metaphor:
one that grapples less with breath.
I shall choose the slow senescence of fallen fruit.
Liquidity within shall signal peace. Perhaps
a promise that the rot at my core
would beget merely the germination of seeds.
of seeds, and of Spring.
Deputy editor’s note– see also: https://bjgplife.com/post-heart-attack-review-poem/
Reference
- J.Launer, Narrative-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, Conversations Inviting change, 2nd edition 2018, Routledge
Featured photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
