Narrative Medicine

I always believed that mastering the understanding and telling of stories is in the center of democratizing data. It truly helps to make data accessible to a wide range of marketers. It seems that an increasing number of disciplines are discovering the power of understanding and telling stories as a way to diagnose problems and communicate them. 

A great indication for this phenomenon is a recent ad from Columbia University advertising a “MS in Narrative Medicine”. It says:

‘”The care of sick unfolds in stories. The effective practice of healthcare requires the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and act on stories and experiences of others. Medicine practiced with narrative competence is a model for humane and effective healthcare. Columbia's new MS in Narrative Medicine seeks to fortify clinical practice and training with narrative skills in order to strengthen the overarching goals of medicine, public health, and social justice, as well as the intimate, interpersonal experiences of clinical encounter”. 

I love the four phase methodology of “Recognize, absorb, interpret, and act on” stories. We marketers probably need a fifth elements whch is to “Tell the story”. It’s an encouraging sign that even medicine tries to uncover stories and use the “Story” metaphor and methodology as a more holistic approach to understanding people, here patients, in our case consumers.