BAAL Health & Science Communication SIG Workshop

“Experiences of illness and death: learning from the discourses of realities and fictions”

“Any serious illness is a medical event, but it is lived in narrative terms” wrote Andrew Solomon in a recent article for The Guardian. This workshop will focus on these ‘lived’ and ‘narrative’ aspects of the experience of illness and death from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Accounts of illness and dying by patients, carers and healthcare professionals have been at the heart the medical humanities for several decades. They have been called upon to better understand patients and to enable patient-centered care, to improve training and empathy in healthcare professionals and to begin to assist those who informally support and care for the ill. They have been investigated from the perspectives of history, sociology, literature, the visual arts and, more recently, linguistics. At the same time, these disparate approaches and applications, have tended to leave the field somewhat fragmented. The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers of different backgrounds who examine and use experiences of illness and death to discuss and explore the methods and applications that allow us to get the most out of these rich and powerful sources of evidence.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Dr Julie Ellis, University of Sheffield

Dr Jonathon Tomlinson, NHS The Lawson Practice

The programme will be available soon at http://www.baal-health.uk/