Skip to content

I first used the phrase "narrative medicine" in [the year] 2000 to refer to clinical practice fortified by narrative competence-- the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret and be moved by the stories of illness.

— Rita Charon

Another quote →

More quotes by Rita Charon

Our task as doctors, nurses, therapists, and ethicists is to learn each patient's personal language in its tenses, its images, its silences, and its tensions.

What needs to be contested in medicine is seldom the accuracy of observations but the restriction of interest--- the frame drawn so tightly--- to the biological.

This isn't just about being a nice doctor or having a nice bedside manner. It's hearing and taking responsibility for improving access and equity, because it's in our power to do this.

Radical listening is the effort to be present, to bear witness, and to listen without your biases and assumptions. It's about curiosity, not judgment.

When doctors write, they too experience the discovery of learning what they know. It continues to astonish me that writing is an avenue to the "unthought known"-- that is, the part of knowledge that sits under awareness.

All Rita Charon quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Rita Charon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.