I never worked on a project that has grabbed hold of my heart every bit as much as my head.
William Deverell on his recent work, Kathy Fiscus: A Tragedy That Transfixed the Nation
The love of human stories was what powered both my interest in medicine and literature.
Pamela Schaff, MD, Ph.D., English
empathy n. the ability to understand and share the feelings or experiences of another.
For this special Trojan Family Weekend Polymathic Pizza, we are taking a metanarrative approach, a bird’s eye view so to speak, at new lines of inquiry and intersections in the fields of medicine and the humanities. We bring together two scholars, Dr. Pamela Schaff and Professor William Deverell, who have taken the unconventional path of applying empathy – the connection to and understanding of their subjects – to their practice, scholarship, and teaching. “Keep your critical distance” has been the traditional mantra in the education of our medical and social science students, but this is changing.
Schaff believes exposure to the arts and humanities, what is known as narrative medicine, will help her students become better, more compassionate doctors. Narrative competence enables students to “interpret and act on the stories that their patients share.” This ability, says Schaff, “fosters empathy in medical students; we want to make sure our students practice with compassionate brilliance.” Empathetic doctors simply make better doctors.
Deverell has also taken the non-traditional path of scholarly writing in his telling of the attempted rescue of a little 3-year-old girl who, in 1949, fell nine stories down an abandoned well. His compassion and shared grief are palpable throughout the pages. He says, “the smallest of human stories matter.” Does Deverell’s deeply human connection to his subject compromise his historical narrative, or elevate it? Most certainly the latter.
The polymathic question becomes; might this application of empathy tested in medicine and the humanities be the next evolution in other fields of learning such as engineering, law, architecture, business, …et al? Imagine students trained in narrative-engineering, narrative-law, narrative-architecture, narrative-business. Empathetic engineers do make better engineers, so the saying goes. So, let’s explore together how we can bring empathy into whatever field, place, or space we are in.
