Narrative Medicine Across Languages and Cultures: Using Minimal English for Increased Comparability of Patients' Narratives

Abstract

Narrative medicine is an approach to medicine which seeks to combine with and enhance conventional evidence-based medicine by adding perspectives and experience in medical humanities. The chapter expounds on the importance of effective communication with patients and in particular on the importance of having some structured protocols (scripts, interview prompts, and the like) to encourage more comprehensive and effective patient narratives and to allow for increased comparability between them. It tells the story of an emerging collaboration with Minimal English and an international pilot study applying Minimal English to such protocols.