Stories in palliative care

Abstract

The significance of stories in palliative care, told by patients or professionals, has been increasingly recognised in recent years, part of the wider acknowledgement of narrative-based medicine.They are regarded as a resource for both clinical work and healthcare education, a view which is not challenged in this paper. The opposite side of the coin, however, is a marked tendency to romanticise stories, and to overlook the ways in which they exploit what one writer calls ‘narratives eduction'. Here, we review the nature of stories, offering reminders about why they are told, and how they elicit emotional responses in readers. We then discuss four reasons for caution when evaluating stories - in palliative care as in any other walk of life - using a series of ‘approaching death' narratives by way of illustration. Our conclusion is, not that we have reason to be sceptical about stories, but that we have reason to be vigilant.