Narrative Medicine in Palliative Care — SCE Palliative Medicine MCQ
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Correct answer: E — Explore the story’s language, meaning and alternative valued identities
Narrative practice attends to how a person organises illness through language, identity, time and relationship. Inviting the account and exploring dominant and alternative meanings can reveal suffering, values and sources of agency. It complements rather than replaces clinical assessment. Premature correction, forced positivity or diagnostic labelling can close down the account and miss opportunities for meaning-centred support.
Reference: Kalitzkus and Matthiessen: Narrative-based medicine: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21391077/; NICE NG197: Shared decision making: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng197/chapter/Recommendations