Narrative medicine: la medicina basata sul racconto.

Narrative medicine is medicine implemented with the narrative competence to perceive and act on the basis of the quandaries of others. It contains an oral/verbal and a written dimension, and, with reference to the former, it implements a structured effort to reduce the distance between physicians and patients, doctors and colleagues and other health professionals, physicians and society. Narrative writing in medicine is an instrument also useful for closing the gap between the two dimensions of the physician, the professional man and the individual person. In an era of technological medicine, such as the current one, there has emerged a strong need for a narrative medicine that retrieves and exalts the communicative features of the relationship between health operator and patient/person in a time-allowing context. As effectively underlined by the Florence Charter (2005) in its fifth item, “Time dedicated to information, communication and relationship is cure time”.