Literature and Medicine: A Practical and Pedagogical Guide is a book that grows
out of more than 18 years of teaching and collaboration between the authors,
Professor Ronald Schleifer, a George Lynn Cross Distinguished Research Professor
of twentieth-century literature and culture, literary aesthetics, and semiotics at the
University of Oklahoma, and Dr. Jerry Vannatta, a David Ross Boyd Professor of
Internal Medicine (retired), former Executive Dean of the University of Oklahoma
College of Medicine with a long career as a practicing physician, a researcher, and
an award-winning classroom professor. The goals for this book—as they have been
for authors’ classes for pre-med and medical students, and for their workshops for
practicing physicians and healthcare professionals—are very specific. They are:
• To help develop in physicians and healthcare professionals through the study of
literature and narrative habits of attentive listening with the patients and others
with whom they work. Among other things, these forms of attention will contribute
to more precise and more efficient understandings of the medical conditions
and personal concerns that brought the patient to the healthcare provider, which,
in turn, will lead to more accurate diagnoses on the part of physicians and healthcare
providers.
• To help develop in physicians and healthcare professionals through the study of
literature and narrative habits of responsive engagement with their patients.
Among other things, these forms of interaction will lead to a greater sense of
empathy on the part of healthcare providers, a greater commitment to treatment
plans on the part of patients, and a greater sense of satisfaction on the parts of
both patients and healthcare providers.
• To help develop in physicians and healthcare professionals through the study of
literature and narrative habits of critical thinking. Among other things, these
forms of reflection will lead to everyday behaviors that will create a greater sense
of professionalism and a more habitual practice of basic ethical responses such
as simple decency and good will.