Dr Jeffrey Borkan, MD, PhD, a researcher, clinician, educator, agrees with Linda Goss that “storytelling is medicine for the spirit and healing for the soul.”
He believes in the narrative–a spoken or written account of connected events–with doctors and patients to obtain differing points of view, and as a tool for professional identity formation for medical students.
During Wednesday’s keynote address, Dr Borkan asked the audience to share their stories as clinicians, researchers, or advocates in family medicine with a partner. Then some audience members volunteered to share extremely creative haikus, poems, and songs with the rest of the audience, demonstrating the potential power of the narrative.