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Three Things to Do With Stories: Using Literature in Medical, Health Professions, and Interprofessional Education

It would be unusual to find a current medical school administrator or faculty member who has not heard the phrase “literature and medicine” or who does not know that literature is taught in various forms—short stories, novels, poems, essays—at many points in the curriculum at U.S. medical schools. Yet the phrase is used in slippery if not elusive ways, with no clear referent common to all who use it. This article focuses on three theoretical and pedagogical uses for literature in medical, health professions, and interprofessional education: close reading, ethical or moral inquiry, and drawing illustrations. Summaries of these approaches are provided, followed by demonstrations of how they might work in the classroom by using the story “Blankets,” by Native American writer Sherman Alexie. Close reading requires reading slowly and carefully to enrich an initial encounter with a text. Ethical or moral inquiry turns to literary representations to challenge readers’ assumptions and prejudices. Literature offers rich, provoking, and unusual depictions of common phenomena, so it can be used to draw illustrations. Although each approach can be used on its own, the authors argue that reading closely makes the other two approaches possible and meaningful because it shares with the diagnostic process many practices critical to skilled interprofessional caregiving: paying attention to details, gathering and reevaluating evidence, weighing competing interpretations. By modeling a close reading of a text, faculty can demonstrate how this skill, which courts rather than resists ambiguity, can assist students in making ethical and compassionate judgments.