Geripal-podcast

Eric and I weren’t sure what to call this podcast  - storytelling and medicine? Narrative medicine?  We discussed it with today’s guests Heather Coats, palliative care NP-scientist, and Thor Ringler, poet.  It wasn’t until the end that the best term emerged - storycatching.  Because that really is what this is about.  Clinicians “catching” patient life stories.    What’s in a story?  Well, as we learned, everything.  Our patients aren’t “the 76 year old with heart failure in room 202,” as Heather Coats astutely noted.  They’re people, and what makes us people if not our life’s stories?  Our loves, our triumphs, our failures, our work, our families.   Thor Ringler helped start the My Life My Story project at the Madison VA in Wisconsin.  It’s since spread to over 70 VAs.  VA “gets” the importance of storytelling in medicine, without the need for reams of research to back it up.  As Thor notes, capturing patient stories has face validity as positively impacting the patients who share their stories and have them