Capítulo 1: The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University Reading Guide for Reflective Practice

Dentro del movimiento de la Medicina Narrativa, ¿cómo se define la lectura que promueve esa atención que afina la capacidad humana para entender y actuar sobre las historias de los pacientes? Una clave se encuentra en el siguiente documento, producido por el equipo del programa de Narrative Medicine en Columbia University para guiar a los profesores clínicos en su evaluación y reacción a las narraciones que lxs estudiantes de medicina producen sobre sus experiencias clínicas. Esta guía tiene mucho en común con la crítica literaria formal y ofrece una base sólida sobre la cual se puede construir una lectura y análisis que integren forma y contexto.^[1] Estas son las categorías que ofrece Charon:

Observation: Signs of perceiving–seeing, hearing, smelling, touching. Details, descriptions, sensory aspects of the scenes.

Perspective: Were multiple perspectives represented, explored, guessed at? How were these perspectives conveyed?

Form: What is the genre–story, poem, play, screenplay, parable, cautionary tale, ghost story, black comedy, others? Notice any use of metaphor or imagery. Describe the temporal structure of the text—are events told in chronological order, in reverse, in chaotic sequence? Are there allusions to other stories or texts? Are there inserted texts (like quotations, letters, sub-stories)? What is the diction–formal, breezy, bureaucratic, scientific?

Voice: Whose voice tells the story? Is the narrative told in a first-person, second-person, or third-person voice? Is the teller near or far, intimate or remote? Can you feel the teller’s presence as you read? Is the telling self-aware?

Mood: What is the mood of the text? In what mood does reading it leave you?

Motion: What does the story do? Does the teller seem to move from the beginning to the end? Does the story bring you somewhere in its course?

— Nellie Hermann, Rita Charon, Michael Devlin, 2012