Literature inspired my medical career: Why the humanities are needed in health care

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Irène Mathieu, University of Virginia

(THE CONVERSATION) While there is a long history of doctor-poets – one giant of mid-20th-century poetry, William Carlos Williams, was famously also a pediatrician – few people seem to know this or understand the power of combining the humanities and medicine.

As a published poet and scholar of the health humanities and ethics, I have a foot squarely planted in each field – or perhaps more accurately, I stand in what I perceive as the overlapping field of healing and poetic practices.

Literature has had a large role in helping me define the kind of physician I strive to be – one who is not only empathetic and a good listener but also a fierce advocate for changing the sociopolitical forces that affect my patients’ lives. I think literature can do this for other health care providers, too.

Narrative competence in medicine

Despite having physicians for parents – or perhaps because of it – initially I had no interest in medicine. It seemed too clinical, too sterile. The work stories my parents shared over the dinner table were intentionally devoid of the personal details that would have interested me.

I was preoccupied with characters in the books I read – who lived in conflict zones, who as children were working instead of playing, who had struggles I couldn’t imagine – and...