The concept of narrative medicine isn’t new to Doane University’s campuses and classrooms. Phil Weitl, professor of English, offered it as a course during the spring 2021 semester, and Dr. Rita Charon presented on the topic for the Lucille Cobb Memorial Lecture Series in fall 2020.
The field of narrative medicine emphasizes using storytelling and active listening to derive care and treatment, a move away from the in-and-out-in-15-minutes, check-the-boxes format that’s become a standard at many American healthcare facilities. It improves patient outcomes, reduces physician burnout and deepens understanding between patients and their doctors.
It’s something that has interested Weitl for a long time — he’s attended conferences on interdisciplinary approaches to medicine for years, nearly for as long as he’s worked at Doane. He wanted to do something new with it, to make the topic more accessible to the wider Doane community through his work as director of The New Xanadu, the university’s digital literature and art magazine.
“We’re talking about medical humanities and narrative and healthcare, but we’re really talking about identity and the narrative of yourself,” Weitl said.
And thus, the idea for Wounded Healers, a discussion about narrative medicine, was born.
The discussion was held over Zoom on January 26, with nearly 50 students and Doane employees in attendance. Titled “What’s My Action: Applying lessons from the page and stage to careers in health and patient care,” it featured the stories and experiences of alumni Bex Marsh ‘10 and Mady Vogel ‘20, as well as junior Nicole Carraher.
Vogel and Carraher had also presented on the topic in October 2021 during the Examined Life conference held by the University of Iowa’s Roy J. and Lucille Carver College of Medicine.
The intersection of health, healing, theatre and acting holds a lot of importance to Marsh, who discovered her passion for theatre and improv at Doane after an injury disrupted her plans to compete in collegiate basketball. (See more of Marsh’s story in our 2021 issue of Doane Magazine.)
Through theatre, she found healing and a completely new take on her identity and career path. Marsh currently lives in Los Angeles as an actor, writer and producer.
“I hope they [viewers] take away an understanding that healing isn’t as practical or linear as we’re taught, and that every person’s path to healing is completely different and unique to them,” Marsh said.
She’s seen the benefits of her theatre training again during a more recent illness, and a lengthy process of discovery that required sharing her own medical narrative with numerous doctors and physicians. And she’s seen how healthcare professionals can make use of a patient’s narrative to better understand them.
“I always come back to just approaching from a place of curiosity from the very beginning,” Marsh said. “Like when a patient comes in, they have a story that this healthcare professional is popped in the middle of and not the beginning. It doesn’t start with that healthcare professional; it’s been ongoing, so can they meet them where that person is at in their story?”
For Carraher, who is majoring in education with an emphasis in English and language arts, her involvement with narrative medicine started, like many great ideas, with a ‘what if.’
She’s been helping with research for an integrated humanities grant at Doane for the past two summers, and observed how interdisciplinary approaches are beneficial in academics and extracurriculars, and beyond. Then she did a presentation about the GOTE acting method — goals, obstacles, tactics and expectation — in the context of politics, for one of the honors classes taught by Weitl.
“Phil [Weitl] reached out to me and said, ‘hey, we’ve got this conference in the next year or so that involves the humanities and medicine,” Carraher said. “And we wondered, okay, can this acting method be applied to like, patient care and how physicians approach their patients.”
As a registered nurse on the nurse enrichment team at Nebraska Methodist Hospital and graduate from Doane’s health and society degree program, Vogel joined Weitl and Carraher on a panel during the Examined Life conference to add thoughts and insights from her experiences.
For both Vogel and Carraher, the experience was eye-opening.
“The most surprising thing for me was how theatre and healthcare have very similar concepts and related subjects,” Vogel said. “I realized in the same way an actor has to embrace a role and truly be that character; I do the same thing with my patients. I constantly am working on embodied qualities I believe are important for being a nurse who provides excellent care.”
It’s the intention, Vogel said, to commit to understanding the narrative explained by a patient that is just as important to healthcare workers as it is for actors exploring and learning a role. And that intention has to be authentic.
“In theatre, we always talk about how acting is reacting, and all of your reactions are grounded, and all of your acting is grounded in truth,” Carraher said. “And it’s very similar if you’re talking about active listening in any profession that you want your reactions and your replies to be grounded in truth and to be genuine. That was a big jumping off point that we came out of from that conference, too.”
Another piece of narrative medicine that Weitl sees as important is, well, the metrics. The return on investment that shows the importance of including the humanities and liberal arts in the practice of medicine and beyond. It’s something he keeps in mind when speaking to prospective students.
“I recognize that I have to consider two constituencies at least in that room. One is the student who is trying to figure out what they want to do, what they love to do,” he said. “But then the other constituency in that room, in addition to that dreamer is, you know, someone who may be writing the checks.”
The benefits of having an interdisciplinary, liberal arts education are something that Marsh, Vogel and Carraher have seen firsthand in their careers and for Carraher, in working with students during her teaching practicum.
“It’s really cool to be able to look back on my nursing career and see how impactful Doane was in shaping me before I even began this career,” Vogel said. “Doane was the starting point for me in my career without me fully understanding how impactful it would be until later.”
