Abstract
This is the first of four chapters focused on the patient-provider relationship. This chapter examines the role of rapport and empathy in clinical medicine. It offers a vignette describing how Dr. Vannatta came to understand the importance of literature in relation to medicine after reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and it offers a representation of the development of rapport in Dr. Anton Chekhov’s story “A Doctor’s Visit” and in Dr. John Stone’s poem “He Makes a House Call.” These literary texts offer examples of the provocation of empathy in readers in ways that can inculcate strategies for inculcating rapport in the clinic.
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Vannatta, Jerry, Ronald Schleifer, and Sheila Crow. 2005. Medicine and Humanistic Understanding: The Significance of Narrative in Medical Practices. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. A DVD-Rom publication.
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Schleifer, R., Vannatta, J.B. (2019). Rapport and Empathy in Medicine. In: Literature and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19128-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19128-3_4
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19127-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19128-3
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