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Letters |15 December 1995

Literature and Medicine: Contributions to Clinical Practice

Roy M. Poses, MD

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  • Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island Pawtucket, RI 02860
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TO THE EDITOR:
It seems a truism that reading literature can help physicians better understand themselves and their patients. However, Charon and colleagues' arguments for applying the methods of literary studies to medical practice were unconvincing [1].
The authors suggest that physicians should analyze their patients' histories as if they were fictional literary narratives. Literature is written to entertain and enlighten. However, physicians take patients' histories to learn about past events relevant to diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. It is unclear why Charon and colleagues consider methods appropriate to analyzing fiction to be the best ways to understand narratives of factual events. Would not methods from history, psychology, or the information sciences be more appropriate?
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Poses RM. Literature and Medicine: Contributions to Clinical Practice. Ann Intern Med. ;123:965. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-123-12-199512150-00027

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Published: Ann Intern Med. 1995;123(12):965.

DOI: 10.7326/0003-4819-123-12-199512150-00027

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Print ISSN: 0003-4819 | Online ISSN: 1539-3704

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