Johanna Shapiro, Ph.D.
Physician anecdotes about their patients have always been a part of medical education and clinical practice. In the post-Flexnerian era, with the introduction of increasingly sophisticated diagnostic technologies and the rise of evidence-based medicine, to a large extent the clinical anecdote went underground. It was still around but told a bit shamefacedly or tagged onto a summary of relevant double-blind randomized clinical trials. Yet practicing physicians have always sensed the importance of story in medicine, and in the last decade or so, this awareness has given rise to a narrativist (re)turn in medicine1 represented through the work of such theorists as Brody, Charon, Greenhalgh and Hurvitz, and Mattingly and Garro. Family Medicine is committed to giving voice to the narrative side of medicine. What follows is intended to help potential authors find their narrative voices and help readers to approach such writing with both appreciation and sophistication.