I have just returned from Medicine Unboxed in Cheltenham. It was a brilliant weekend, inspiring as ever.
My imagination was particularly captured by the poet Jo Shapcott. She discussed the importance of imagery and metaphor in illness and disease, and how this frames a person's existence. This allows patients' to take on their own identity and construct their new reality; to process their emotions and feelings about the present and the future. The ability to imagine other existances is what makes us human, and feeds our curiosities. This projection of imagination into others' experiences is the definition of empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Unfortunately empathy is a quality in medicine that is sometimes lacking in some doctors. Whether that is due to doctor personality and beliefs, or poor training, or time constraints, I'm not certain. But empathy is crucial in modern medicine to express the humanity in an often alien and overwhelmingly scientific culture.
Jo Shapcott read this poem at the conference as an example of what empathy is: to totally project yourself into another experience. Go inside the tree is a beautiful lesson on the relationship between imagination and empathy; the need to take a huge leap of imagination in order to get to the truth of a situation.
