Configuring Narrative in the Discourse of Health and Medicine

This article explores narrative as a feature of medical research writing and a means of incorporating patient-authored "perspectives" into the discourse of health and medicine. Focusing on published case reports that include a distinctive section devoted to the patient's perspective, I specifically examine how practitioner and patient narratives configure cases in different ways: the former based on conventions associated with clinical reporting; the latter based on embodied experience with illness and clinical care. My analysis shows how these perspectives can be both generative and limiting. On the one hand, they broaden the reach of patient narratives via inclusion in the research literature, and on the other hand, they have potential to conceptualize patient experience as mere perspective, supplementing the practitioner's sanctioned account rather than adding explanatory value to the case on its own terms. Acknowledging these challenges, I theorize narrative as a site of rhetorical possibility that recognizes the value of patient stories without unduly placing practitioners and patients on opposing sides of an expert/non-expert divide. The article concludes by suggesting avenues for development in areas of research, education, and clinical practice.