{"id":10505,"date":"2022-08-16T11:10:40","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T15:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=10505"},"modified":"2022-08-16T11:10:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T15:10:40","slug":"story-as-evidence-our-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/story-as-evidence-our-story\/2022\/08\/16\/","title":{"rendered":"Story as Evidence — Our Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Edvard Munch, Towards the Forest II, 1915.<\/p><\/div>\n

JAMA<\/em> has a long-running and quite wonderful weekly feature called A Piece of My Mind, in which clinicians (mostly physicians) write about the human side of medicine. Not the place for dry descriptions of study designs or laboratory methods, A Piece of My Mind instead welcomes anecdotes, opinions, and emotions.<\/p>\n

After all, as Drs. Preeti Malani and Jody Zylke wrote in a 2020 piece celebrating 40 years of the column<\/a>, “physicians treat patients, not just their diseases, and confront complicated issues and circumstances daily.” In many of the columns, the table is turned, and the physician-writer shares what it’s like to be the patient — the person on the other side of the stethoscope, the scalpel, the chemotherapy infusion, or the psychotherapist’s office.<\/p>\n

There’s a real strength to this form of communication, which at times can exceed the influence of even the best-designed clinical trial. While a single case might not stand up to a rigorous statistical analysis, a compelling story about a single patient — either as the caregiver or the person receiving the care — can have remarkable power.<\/p>\n

Dr. Louise Aronson brilliantly described this phenomenon in a 2015 submission entitled “Story as Evidence, Evidence as Story.”<\/a> She wrote:<\/p>\n

In the public arena, the N-of-1 personal experience is considered not only data worthy of consideration but also sufficient to establish expertise. With a frequency and consistency that should make those who question the role of anecdotes in discussions of medicine and science rethink their position, a single, well-told story of human suffering trumps the most eloquent explanation of a large-scale trial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought of this “Story as Evidence” phenomenon when hearing that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion after nearly 50 years. Naively, I thought growing up that this right to choose would never be taken away.<\/p>\n

Why is this relevant to A Piece of My Mind?<\/p>\n

Because my wife and I have our own story to tell, now more than 2 decades old, and JAMA<\/em> was kind enough to publish it this week.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JAMA has a long-running and quite wonderful weekly feature called A Piece of My Mind, in which clinicians (mostly physicians) write about the human side of medicine. Not the place for dry descriptions of study designs or laboratory methods, A Piece of My Mind instead welcomes anecdotes, opinions, and emotions. After all, as Drs. Preeti […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-patient-care"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}