ABSTRACT
One of the more surprising and encouraging developments of recent times has been the proliferation of the arts and humanities within hospitals and other medical institutions. C. Kaye identifies as pivotal in this development the outcome of the Carnegie Trust's inquiry, under the chairmanship of Sir Richard Attenborough into the role of the arts in the National Health Service and the social services. The chapter outlines a few of the ways in which learning from the arts can help the author work in healthcare. The kinds of situation that arise in healthcare are so complex, kaleidoscopic and chaotic that more than one story can be used as an explanation or description of what is happening. However, much of modern medicine is less and less like this. A smaller proportion of the whole is now clear-cut, or capable of swift resolution with acute medical or surgical care.
