Languages of Care in Narrative Medicine

This book explains how narrative medicine can improve evidence based medicine (EBM), making it more effective and efficient, giving patients better quality of life and offering more satisfaction to all health care providers.
It discusses not only the disease experienced by the person who is ill, but also focuses on the context and the culture, and investigates how narrative medicine can make other disciplines around the globe more applicable, less manipulative, and more “scientific”. Only by integrating the narrative aspects, can EBM become more effective and efficient, with fewer uncured patients, more satisfied patients with a better quality of life, and satisfaction for all health care providers.
Every chapter is divided into two main sections: the first presents the latest research in the field, with comments and interviews with experts, while the second section provides a list of practical exercises and tasks.
The book is intended for anyone with an interest in caring for and curing patients: all care providers of care, physicians, general practitioners, specialists nurses, psychotherapists, counselors, social workers, providers of aid, healthcare managers, scientific societies, academics and researchers.

“This book explores how our interactions with patients both help and hinder the delivery of healthcare. It is a philosophical book that seeks to balance evidence-based medicine with the need to listen and understand the patient through narrative medicine. … This is a book for thinkers in medicine and linguistics, caretakers of patients, all medical personnel, and clinicians at all levels of expertise and specialization.” (Vincent F Carr, Doody's Book Reviews, April 12, 2019)

“Until now a tension has existed between proponents of evidence-based medicine and narrative approaches. In this brave and original book, Maria Giulia Marini uses the relatively new discipline of Natural Semantic Metalanguage as a bridge between these two areas. ... A special feature of this book is its appeal to works of art as natural extensions of the language of care. Marini reads two classic novels by Virginia Woolf to explore the way time is experienced differently by sick people and their relatives, from, say, clinical professionals. She explores music, the visual arts and architecture as communicative systems that can structure and contain illness experiences. And she revises the intellectual foundations of narrative based medicine in the process. … This book takes us back to something basic. It attempts to bridge the gap between patients and clinicians by harnessing their joint commitment to hope, coping and kindness, by teaching both new languages of care. A must-read book for health humanists, clinicians and linguists.” (Neil Vickers, Professor of English Literature and the Health Humanities, London, GB)

Maria Giulia Marini is an epidemiologist, counselor at the Health and Wellness Department of the Fondazione ISTUD, Baveno, Italy. With a classic humanistic background, she had a scientific academic training in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology, and specialized in epidemiology and pharmacology,: She developed a specific interest in the integration of humanities and sciences to favour care   humanization and to offer patients  a health system more in line with their needs. With 28 years of professional experience in health care, she is currently on the board of Italian Society of Narrative Medicine, tenured professor of Narrative Medicine at Humanitas University of Milan, Faculty of Medicine,  and referee for  WHO for  “Narrative Method in Public Health.”  Author of more than 100 national publications and several international publications, in 2013 she founded the online journal Chronicle of Narrative Medicine.