One of the goals of this course is to create your own narrative rooted in your own experience. This is a reflective essay: you can write about your own experience as a clinician, as a patient, as a caregiver of a member of your family, or in whatever role you choose related to the work we've been doing in this class (after running it by me first). It can be purely autobiographical or, if you prefer a more creative route, that’s perfectly fine, too. Just be in touch with me early on in the course about ideas you have for your project.

As a reminder, please only discuss and use material that is appropriate and comfortable to share in a class setting--in regard to you own disclosures, appropriate expectations of the reader, and protection of anyone discussed in the narrative. Even narratives with first-hand experience benefit from protections for all involved and balance in regard to structured work and careful selection of the most appropriate and relevant elements in the experience to be shared.

The key to this assignment is that you demonstrate your understanding of the elements of the narratives of illness and caregiving that we have read and discussed throughout the semester and that you tell your story with the same honesty, detail, and emotional depth that our authors have.

Illness and caregiving narratives are often character narratives. They tell the story of the lived experience of a person, providing an opportunity to go beyond clinical and medical elements of a story, allowing a narrator to consider the experiential elements of an illness (or injury, health condition, or disability) or caring for a person or persons living with an illness.

These kinds of reflective essays are rich in description of what it is like to be sick and cared for or to be a caregiver for another.  The narrative may fold in larger questions about the state of medical care today, the quality of medical treatment, or address the ways in which being a patient or a caregiver affects a person’s identity, sense of self, or place in the world. Some narratives may explore social or philosophical questions of health or healthcare and how being ill or being caregiver affects a person’s beliefs, ideas about the medical profession, or thoughts about the treatment of others, etc. Themes such as death, dignity, resilience, survival, pain, suffering, and empathy, are often common to these kinds of reflective narratives.

🎯 The aim in your essay is to be honest and recount in vivid detail your experience and to reflect on its significance.

There is a lot of room for creative freedom regarding form, but a successful illness or caregiving narrative will have attributes similar those of other forms of writing. These include:

• A distinctive, clear narrative voice suited to your narrative
• A beginning, middle and end (although these do not have to be in chronological order!)
• Some sort of organizing principle and structure that ties the narrative together [Your reader needs to be able to follow and make sense of your story.]
• Meaningful reflection/analysis
• Evocative description that draws on the five senses
• Strong, active verbs
• Thoughtfully chosen words/rich imagery
• Figures of speech (metaphors, etc.)
• Dialogue (when appropriate and if it brings to life the lived experience).
• Discussion and use of material that is appropriate and comfortable to share in a class setting--in regard to your own disclosures, appropriate expectations of the reader, and protection of anyone discussed in the narrative.