Development of interdisciplinary research group on Patient Stories

The international and interdisciplinary conference, entitled Patient stories in context, focused on illness narratives in a literary, sociological, medical and healthcare perspective. The conference focused on patient stories both as a unique literary genre and as potential contributors to a more patient-centered medicine and healthcare. Topics present at the conferance were related to: - Narratives and patient stories - Patient stories and narratology - Autobiography, performative biographism and patient stories -Patient stories in/and history - Patient stories and indigenous people - Media and patient stories There were 23 presentations at the conference. Keynotes var: -Molly Andrews, University of East London: Speaking anothers pain: Narratives and Ventriloquism. - Anne Kveim Lie, Universitetet i Oslo: Patient stories and their uses: From consultation by letter to patient centered care? - Mathias Martinez, Universität Wuppertal: Patient Stories as Narratives: Constructions or Fictions? A special issue in the interdisciplinary, peer reviewed journal "Sygdom and samfund" presenting some of the lectures from the conference, will be published spring 2019.

HAS is an far-reaching interdisciplinary cooperation with researchers from the humanities, social sciences and medicine. The group's main research objective is to study the autobiographical writing of patients (pathographies) as a supplementary part of the medical record and a crucial part of a functioning and useroriented health care system. The group seeks to develop new knowledge on Patient Stories, which, in turn, will contribute to improved health care and active client participation. The study of Patient Stories from various perspectives of the humanities, the social sciences, and medicine represents a radical interdisciplinary approach. Patient Stories have primarily been studied from a social scientific perspective. So far, the subject has received little attention from both literary and medical scholars. Thus, with its interdisciplinary approach, HAS? research is both radically new and significant within all the relevant fields of research. Within the respective academic disciplines, HAS seeks to both challenge and develop central issues such as health and illness, doctor-patient relationships, the relationship between individual and society, and views on literature and literary genres. The long-term objective of this application for for network funding is to strengthen the component of humanities and social science research in projects outside of these disciplines' traditional objects of study. The nine participants of HAS are recruited both from the University of Tromsø and from external institutions. The internal members are: post.doc Marianne Andreassen (National Center of Telemedicine), senior researcher Anita Salamonsen (Department of Community Medicine), professor Marie-Theres Federhofer (Department of German culture and literature), Lill-Tove Fredriksen (Department of Saami cultur and literature) and professor Michael Schmidt (Department of Germen culture and group leader Linda Nesby (Department of Culture and Literature).