Only Human After All: Reflecting on the Risky Business of Sharing Stories with Strangers

Abstract: Ethics consultants help make sense and find meaning among the “anarchy of voices” found within any clinical context by creating space for patient, family, and clinician stories to unfold. Sharing, making sense of, and finding meaning in consultants’ own stories of clinical encounters is less commonly engaged; appreciating such stories as moral activity deserving attention is even less common.

Four panelists working in clinical ethics and medical humanities thus explore the question, “What does it mean to share stories of one’s own clinical practice and experiences?”

First, a practicing clinical ethicist with a background in religious studies frames the idea that writing about clinical ethicists’ own experiences is a moral activity and hence opportunity for shared reflection on clinical ethics practice – one unavailable in writing case studies.

Second, a philosopher and clinical ethicist explores historic resistance to personal stories for clinical ethics work, the result of which is retreat from clinical responsibility into role.

Third, an anthropologist and clinical ethicist revisits the relevance of self-reflective, embodied, situatedness for clinical practice and considers the import of critical-interpretive medical anthropology and practices of autoethnography for clinical ethics work.

Finally, a health humanities scholar and educator reflects on what clinical ethicists can learn from listening to stories told by clinicians, patients, and families and how a reciprocity of stories supports and informs ethical decision-making.

The second panelist will moderate discussion among panelists and audience, inviting questions, critiques, and the sharing of attendees’ own stories about storytelling in clinical ethics work.