Hassan, Ami, and Dalia's Mom: Narrative Medicine in Pediatrics

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Communication among human beings has become increasingly mediated by technology in many areas, including medicine, where the mediation has moved doctors and patients apart. Physician-patient communication has been studied from various perspectives, including Narrative Medicine, which deals with clinical narratives— stories of therapeutic activities created by physicians for and with patients over time. But, despite the fact that the field of Narrative Medicine is by now quite rich, relatively little can be found in the literature that deals with the specific area of Narrative Medicine in the management of illness in children—a challenge characterized by the need for communication among three parties (the physician, the child, and the parents). Through the stories of three child-patients, this chapter addresses this gap and attempts to characterize what constitutes an effective, lifesaving, and enhancing pediatric narrative, and to make a contribution toward an integrated and coherent theory of Pediatric Narrative Medicine.