Assignment one:

Each week you should report or summarize one news article or report, journal article, Internet resource, etc. that addresses some aspect of Teaching about Culture and Health . Ideally it will address the specific topic for that week.  Environmental scanning is an information gathering technique that allows you to report relevant information from sources that you already view or utilize. Essentially, it allows each of us to contribute to teaching the class by sharing information that we have found.  It is expected that students and the instructor will respond to other’s postings. Try to provide a link the reference or at minimum a  reference (using AMA style). 

My example this week is Charon R. Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Rita Charon is one of the leading proponents/experts in narrative medicine.  As you might imaging she takes a very expository or narrative approach to writing her book.  She is also very impassioned about her work and the use of narrative medicine (she is an internist).  Very effective approach, the chapter titles give you her approach to this topic:

–      What is Narrative Medicine?

–      Narratives of Illness

–      Developing Narrative Competence

–      Dividends of Narrative Medicine

As you can see from chapter three, she believes this is a skill that can be learned and taught.

Assignment two:

Please read the assigned articles and create a mini-saga. 

A mini-saga tells a very, very short story using up to 50 words (The title does not count as part of the 50 words.) Words or sentences (or combinations) can be used.

For this weeks discussion question, you can write the mini-saga from a patient, care-giver, or health care provider point of view.  Mini-sagas can be positive or negative.  Although personal experience may give you ideas, this should be fiction.

Please extend the “narrative” perspective to write a mini-saga about one of the following:

–      Illness Narratives

–      Health Beliefs and Healing Traditions

–      Patient-Physician Negotiation

Example

Are they listening? They give me pills that are worse than the disease.  Up all night, woozy all day. 

Tell my story.  Ask my questions.  They never really answer. 

Take my ginkgo and my rose bark, but not always their medicine.  Don’t I get a vote? 

Are they listening?