The Art of Sharing: Telling Stories With Your Patients

Medscape

03-06-2025

How much of yourself do you share with your patients and their parents? Your colleagues? Your partners? I'm not talking about time and energy. I'm asking about the stories you tell. I recently read an interview with the two physician authors who have just published a book titled Becoming a Better Physician . The subtitle of the book is 'Insightful and Inspirational Stories from Attending Physicians, Residents and Medical Students.' In the interview in Harvard Medicine, the authors, Mark Goldstein, MD, and Kathy May Tran, MD, say that 'openness was one of the primary goals when working on the book.' They observe that showing one's vulnerability is often interpreted as a sign of weakness, particularly among members of the medical profession.
William Wilkoff, MD
Prompted by the general increase in burnout, the authors are hoping that by sharing their stories and the stories of other health professionals, more physicians will feel comfortable telling their stories and benefiting from the catharsis that often follows the telling.
Tran says she sees one of our roles as physicians as being storytellers. We elicit and listen to the stories of our patients, and then in turn take what we have learned about the patient using our knowledge and other diagnostic tools to construct a story which we then tell — but we are very reluctant to tell our own stories.
I completely agree with the authors about the cathartic benefits of storytelling, and I hope their book will encourage more physicians to tell their stories at every stage of their professional trajectories. However, the barriers to sharing are real and in some cases self-imposed.
I'm told that before my time, in many communities, physicians traditionally took Wednesday afternoons off and played golf. I'm not sure if this is true, but I suspect that there were more opportunities back then for physicians to rub elbows and swap stories than there are now in the fast-paced, time-limited world of 21st century medicine.
Although there is currently a strong emphasis on care delivery by 'the team,' and some of it is out of necessity, the practice of primary care pediatrics is still a stream of one-on-one encounters between the patient and the physician. Ironically, in an environment populated with scores of assistants and care seekers, the physician can often feel lonely.
Reading the stories of others who have walked the same walk can be enlightening and soothing, but it is really the process of sharing one's own story that can be the most therapeutic. Not everyone has the time, skill, or contacts that allow them to share their stories with a broader audience. Historically, keeping a diary provided a vehicle for expression; it can still have its benefits, but merely expressing yourself pales in comparison to the cathartic value of sharing your experience with a fellow traveler.
I was fortunate to have found someone to share my stories with while I was in medical school. That good fortune continues to be a reminder to me that we should be putting more emphasis on the topic of relationship-building as we prepare students for the challenges they may face on the path to a rewarding career in medicine.