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Narrative Medicine And Health Care Ethics: Religious And Literary Approaches To Patient Identity And Clinical Practice, Tara Flanagan Tracy

Dissertations

This dissertation examines practices of narrative medicine and moral identity for end-of-life patients, with special attention given to Aristotle's Poetics and the work of Paul Ricoeur. While noting the genuine value of narrative medicine for clinicians, I examine the limits of self-narration for patients who are unable to offer a linear, coherent narrative of their lives due to cognitive deficits such as Alzheimer's disease. Nevertheless, the premise of narrative medicine, that being a close reader of texts can develop the ability to attend closely to patients, remains useful. When the sources used in narrative medicine are expanded to include those …