Training Healthcare Professionals through Cinema

The Role of Embodied Experience in the Co-construction of Illness Narratives

Abstract

Every medical system is based on a specific anthropology and, in particular, on a specific idea of the body. Narrative-based medicine, in reaction to the biomedical model that tends to reduce the body to a mere biological entity, is engaged in an attempt to restore centrality to subjective bodily experience, enhancing its role in the co-construction of illness stories. Starting from a critical reflection on the relationship between the narrative dimension of medicine and the phenomenological sense of the body, the article proposes a selection of films, which on the one hand allows us to delve into a number of extremely relevant issues in the training of care professionals, and on the other hand to explore the philosophical-anthropological conception underlying the narrative-based approach.