{"id":102,"date":"2017-03-19T23:35:12","date_gmt":"2017-03-19T23:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/?p=102"},"modified":"2018-04-22T22:31:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T21:31:46","slug":"a-limitless-ocean-of-humanity-in-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/a-limitless-ocean-of-humanity-in-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"A limitless ocean of humanity in literature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Storyhealing, by Gavin Francis. <\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The weight of clinical practice can be overwhelming for some \u2013 that\u2019s why more doctors in the West are working part-time and retiring earlier than ever before. But the profession\u2019s very multiplicity offers insights and inspirations, satisfactions and consolations, available in few other others.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m now 20 years into my medical career, and medicine and literature have sometimes felt like the verso and recto of a single page, at other times the left and right foot of a steady gait, but neither of those metaphors carries the sense of heaviness that medical work can bring, which a love of literature can leaven.<\/p>\n<p>If the two can work together, there\u2019s a limitless ocean of humanity out there to explore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the full essay S<a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/3456085\/w-eugene-smiths-landmark-photo-essay-country-doctor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">toryhealing (Gavin Douglas)<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aeon.co\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">aeon.co<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Commentary<\/h3>\n<p>Francis tells the story of an army veteran who, fifteen years after coming home from Afghanistan,\u00a0 is still haunted by flashbacks, rarely goes out, sleeps poorly, sometimes slices at his own forearms. Since leaving the army, he has never had a girlfriend. Self-neglect has robbed him of strength and self-confidence. He offered him a book he&#8217;d been reading &#8211; Redeployment (2014) by Phil Klay \u2013 short stories about US military operations in Iraq. No book can substitute for direct experience, but the stories gave a way to start talking about what Fraser was going through. It seemed to help.<\/p>\n<p>So storyhealing can work for patients. But equally striking is the part of the essay when he reflects on how literature helps the practitioner too.<\/p>\n<h3>Further info<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gavin_Francis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Gavin Francis<\/a> (Wikipedia); <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gavinfrancis.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">own website<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wordsworkwellscotland.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Words Work Well <\/a>promotes <a href=\"http:\/\/wordsworkwellscotland.co.uk\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">bibliotherapy<\/a>, using literature in a more structured way to help patients. (<a href=\"http:\/\/wordsworkwellscotland.co.uk\/lapidus_tool\/how-to-use-the-toolkit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bibliotherapy toolkit<\/a> page).<\/li>\n<li>Image:\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/otakumode.com\/chanomach\/post\/495992063267962880\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sea of books &#8211; Yajirushi<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Contributed by<\/h3>\n<p>Neil Turner<\/p>\n<h3>More like this<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Storyhealing, by Gavin Francis. The weight of clinical practice can be overwhelming for some \u2013 that\u2019s why more doctors in the West are working part-time and retiring earlier than ever before. But the profession\u2019s very multiplicity offers insights and inspirations, satisfactions and consolations, available in few other others. I\u2019m now 20 years into my medical <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/a-limitless-ocean-of-humanity-in-literature\/\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":[],"wpupg_custom_link_nofollow":[],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[11,32,13],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-practice","tag-doctor-experience","tag-humanities-to-support-patients","tag-prose"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}