[01] Renee A. Pistone, Humanities Division, Kean University, Union, NJ, USA.

There are similarities among the disciplines: Neurology, Psychology, Narrative Medicine, and the Arts. There is a connection between us since modernly cultural identities are often formed based on television, film, and books. Surely, no medical narrative may depict all events that stem from treating an illness and no book, regardless of the author’s talent, will place its readers in the suffering patient’s body. The patient’s truth and recollections are laid bare in: physical evidence as displayed visually, documents, memoir, and diaries. These medical narratives must be taken as a whole in our attempts to understand that a patient’s pain can be measured and communicated more than any mere number on a scale of one to ten. It has become increasingly clear that other forms of evidence, such as the medical narrative between doctor and patient also show that human suffering can be reflected upon among different cultures by embracing our shared humanity.

Narrative Medicine, Suffering, Communication

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