NARRATIVES OF SURGICAL CARDIOVASCULAR PATIENTS
NARRATIVES OF SURGICAL CARDIOVASCULAR PATIENTS

Summary/Abstract: Patients narratives define as a stable linguistic entity through a series of specific traits. Firstly, patient and doctor narratives are defined by their timely limited quality, which is expressed on a temporal scale. The patient's story has a starting point, then it unfolds in a series of events which are narrated by the acting character. The acting character may be the patient himself or, as a first-person narrator, the patient may bring a series of events narrated by a third party. Lastly, the story must have a predictable ending. The ending of a patient's story is set at least on a temporal scale again if the story might not the end at the same pace as the narrated events. Secondly, once there is at least one narrator and one-story receptor, the story unfolding might be affected by the different vision and perception of both actors upon the narrated events. And thirdly, as the literature of Greenhalgh and Hurwitz show (Greenhalgh and Hurwitz, 1999) the narrated events are character centred, showing the way the actor is impacted by the story, in our case the story of illness and suffering. By analysing the stories of surgical cardiovascular patients about their experiences with the medical system and doctors, we research a piece of rich information offered on how the life of patients is affected and how the doctors might improve their communication with their patients. Therefore, it might not be sufficient to narrate, as events unfold - what the characters in the stories do and how they perform - but there is a secondary story, unfolding in the background of the main story - which is the way the being itself is affected and how the patients live with their illness. The context of narratives offers rich information on how the patients need to be treated and how their illnesses are to be addressed. One must not forget that fear, anxiety, despair, pain, shame and sadness, they all come together with the illness the patient is suffering of, most of the times being responsible for enhancing the illness's effects. (Greenhalgh & Hurwitz, 1999 : 48)

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