Stephen Covey, Narrative Medicine and common sense

Stephen Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, spoke of paradigms, and the importance of seeing things from the other's perspective. Narrative medicine is gaining a following in medical schools, with Columbia now offering a Masters degree in the subject. Narrative listening has been described as:

"Hearing the patient's history of present illness as a story".

It is important to listen with, not to, the story, to understand the type of story (chaos, restitution, quest, testimony, epiphany), and, if appropriate, to help the patient change their story. An excellent background to Narrative Medicine is here.

The course involves the study of literature to enable doctors to ellicit, understand, and interpret their patient's stories about their life as well as their illness. Better listening and interpretative skills will lead to better diagnosis and treatment.

My grandparents would not understand the concept. Their family doctor knew the family history and circumstances of every patient simply by being part of the community. Nor did those doctors have the diagnostic tools of today available, they were very reliant on interpreting not just what the patient was telling them, but what they observed, and heard around town

My grandfather and father were both lawyers in a provincial town. They both knew more about the circumstances of their clients than their clients ever told them. I'm sure they both knew when to expect a visit from a client because they had already heard about the circumstance leading to the visit, such as a death in the family, business purchase, or recent accident.  Both were David Maister's Trusted Advisors ever before he coined the term

I studied medicine for a couple of years before transferring to law and at the time was bemused by the proportion of incredibly smart kids who were studying with me, but were incapable of communicating with the other students.  It was a topic of discussion as to how they would ever be able to extract a medical history from a patient.  Having been exposed to a couple of doctors entirely lacking in bedside manner, I am delighted to see the return to old style medicine, even if it has to be taught as a subject.

Law schools need to offer something similar.  I have spent more than 25 years dealing with clients with issues about their lawyers, and the vast majority of the time the problem stemmed from a failure to communicate, and to understand things from the client's perspective

The reason for the need for Narrative Medicine and Narrative Law is summarised to Stephen Covey's response to criticism that 7 Habits were just common sense:

"I did not invent the seven habits, they are universal principles and most of what I wrote about is just common sense.... But they are not common practice".

Narrative listening should be common practice for all professionals.