Catholic bioethicist Cory Labrecque, PhD, discusses the healing narratives of Jesus as a rich resource for Christian patients and their caregivers as they pursue meaning and the preservation of personhood following life-changing illness or disability.

Undergraduate students at Emory University interviewed individuals in three unique relationships to shed light on the diverse impacts disability has on differently-abled people within relationships.

Robyn Fivush, PhD, argues that sharing our stories with others, and listening to their stories, is a fundamental way of connecting–for patients and medical providers alike. She reports on emerging research that demonstrates the power of stories to build empathy and promote healing.

Professors Jeffrey Bernstein, Michael Smith, and Rebecca Nowacek make the case that being a good citizen requires understanding the lives other people experience–their joy and suffering–and working to ease the troubles others face.

Authors Ami Walsh, MFA, Jeffrey Evans, PhD, and colleagues describe how digital technology is being used to create patient-centered audio stories in a dynamic program at Michigan Medicine. Audio storytelling, they report, helps to honor a patient’s sense of self and offer comfort and hope.

Dr. Kylie Smith explores the history of mental health nursing by studying the therapeutic role of nurses. By examining the social and historical context of nursing practice, she highlights the humanities as powerful educational tools that allow one to critically analyze the assumptions and narratives that underpin modern health care practice.

Alison Cogan, occupational therapist and doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California, explores the benefits of developing skills for understanding and interpreting stories through reading and analyzing published first-person illness narratives.

Health humanities scholar and creative writer, Dr. Lisa Kerr Dunn joins with Medical University of South Carolina colleagues to provide strategies for designing health humanities courses to foster the development of student collaborative knowledge, attitudes, and skills.

Dr. Jacqueline Laures-Gore, Director of the Aphasia and Motor Speech Disorders Research Lab at Georgia State University, describes how speech-language pathologists have sought to use modes of artistic expression to link humanistic endeavor with the science of clinical work.