ABSTRACT
The importance of storytelling within medical and health provision and education has become increasingly recognized with the emergence of narrative medicine as a serious sub-discipline. Stories allow us to understand the individual human aspect of health provision, as well as the wider cultural context in which it happens, leading to more satisfactory and more human(e) outcomes. It is, though, very easy for us to fall into the trap of becoming uncritical cheerleaders for storytelling, whereas we should be ever vigilant and demanding of our own practice and be our own greatest critics as storytellers. This discursive essay—by three academics from different disciplines across health science, medical education, and arts and humanities, who have collaborated on storytelling and health projects—takes a view that stories are capable of deceiving, as much as revealing; they can convey multiple and contradictory meanings; and they can perpetuate outdated practices and myths, as well as challenge and overturn existing power structures. If we are to maximize the benefits of narrative approaches to health, we must accept and work with stories’ inherently slippery nature.
