Understanding what it means to be a health practitioner: biographies of care and concern

Abstract

I am not a health practitioner, although I work in a Health Sciences Faculty. As the faculty’s ‘Education Advisor’, I am intimately involved in the education of health practitioners. I mentor students to learn more effectively and work with teachers to help prepare clinically competent, caring professionals. Perhaps because I am not medically trained, I evaluate graduates through the eyes of a patient-consumer. I am obviously concerned with clinical competence. But I also want to know, ‘will this graduate professional understand me as a person, viewing my health care as integral to who I am as a human being, collaborating with me to ensure my best quality of life?' Growing research informs on how to teach for technical competence, ensuring that graduates display the knowledge and skills prerequisite for accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. My concern is for nurturing 'what it means to be human': i.e. helping students to develop moral wisdom,¹ and to improve their empathy for patients' experiences.² This might, I argue, be achieved through engaging students in fictional and biographical accounts of the lives of health practitioners and patients. Medicine provides knowledge about the health of a person. Literature provides insight into the meaning of an individual's experience.³ Stories offer students opportunities to live in the 'skin' of another, and to comprehend a patient's illness and treatment from the patient's point of view.⁴ Stories engage readers more fully than do clinical descriptions because they mobilise the imagination.⁵ Stories clarify the roles and expectations of health practitioners.⁴ Stories frame events and emotions in ways that encourage student- readers to examine critically all that a health practitioner is called upon to do.⁴ They provide students with language and tools for thinking about and managing, not only their patients, but also themselves and their own emotions. They alert students to the uncertainty and ambiguity intrinsic to health care practice. By engaging with literature, students may have their existing beliefs and assumptions challenged. They may or may not agree with the actions of protagonists, but they are unable to ignore the meaning and significance of these actions.⁷ Health care narratives thus signal to students that health care practice is more than technical and scientific competence. It encompasses acts of interpretation and contemplation.⁴