Why Doctors Should Tell Better Stories

In medicine, we are trained to reduce.

“A 45-year-old man presents with chest pain.”

“A febrile 6-year-old with no significant past medical history.”

“A 32-year-old G2P1 at 38 weeks gestation with a category II tracing.”

These are the ways we begin our clinical stories—terse, clean, efficient. But also stripped. Sanitized. Clinical. Somewhere between the SOAP note and the billing code, the patient becomes the case, and the story becomes the summary.

And yet—we are surrounded by stories. Not the polished kind that make it into textbooks or press releases, but the real, tangled, beautiful kind: stories of uncertainty and intuition, of loss and learning, of failure and forgiveness. Stories that move us. Shape us. Sometimes haunt us.

We just don’t always tell them.

What a Story Is—And What It’s Not

When I say “story,” I don’t mean embellishment. I don’t mean drama. I don’t mean a sweeping, cinematic arc where everything resolves neatly by the end.

A story, at its heart, is simply a structure for meaning.

It’s a way to convey not just what happened, but why it mattered. It’s a scaffold for emotion, for memory, for transformation. while they often have them, stories don't require a beginning, middle, and end—but they do require a point of view. A voice. A human presence.

In medicine, a story can be a conversation you can’t forget. A decision that haunts you. A moment that changed the way you practice. It doesn’t need to be dramatic to be meaningful. It just needs to be true—emotionally, if not always neatly factually. Because truth in medicine isn’t just data. It’s also experience.

And the people best positioned to tell these kinds of stories? Are doctors. We live them every day. We just forget that they’re worth telling.

The Power of Story in Medicine

Think back to what you remember most from training. The protocol for cryoprecipitate? Probably not. But the 23-year-old patient with DIC from an amniotic fluid embolism—that you remember. Not because it was rare, but because it was real. Because someone told it as a story. And you lived it as one.

Stories are how we teach in medicine. Case-based learning. Morning report. M&M. We use narrative to transmit knowledge, values, and cautionary tales. And yet when we step out of the classroom, we’re expected to turn off that narrative instinct. We’re told to be objective, neutral, clinical.

But here’s the truth: stories are not the opposite of science. They’re how we make sense of science. They’re how we translate the abstract into the human.

And more than that—stories heal.

Patients want more than the right antibiotic or the most accurate diagnosis. They want to be seen. To feel that their story was heard. That it mattered. And we want that, too. That’s why we became doctors—not just to fix, but to understand. To witness.

Why Doctors Are Natural Storytellers—But Often Don’t Use That Skill

Doctors are, by necessity, pattern recognizers. We see arcs. We look for beginnings, middles, and ends. We’re trained to manage uncertainty, to chase resolution. In that way, we are born storytellers.

But we’re also trained to be cautious with emotion. To be wary of subjectivity. To prioritize data over voice. And so we silence our own narratives. We hide behind the passive voice. We bury our experiences under piles of standardized documentation.

And it’s a loss. Because some of the best stories in medicine never get told—not because they weren’t worth telling, but because the teller didn’t feel allowed.

What Happens When We Tell Better Stories

When doctors speak up, write clearly, and share generously, remarkable things happen.

We change minds. Think of physician-writers who’ve influenced public policy, shifted health literacy, or humanized controversial issues. Think of the essays that have made you feel less alone. The blog post you bookmarked. The Tweet that punched you in the gut with how true it felt.

We change systems. Patient narratives can illuminate flaws in care delivery. Reflective writing can make us better educators. A well-told story can change how an entire institution approaches consent, or communication, or grief.

And sometimes, we just change ourselves. Because telling the story helps us process it. Helps us heal. Helps us remember what it all meant.

A Call to Write, Speak, and Share

You don’t need to be Atul Gawande or Danielle Ofri. You don’t need a book deal or a TED Talk. You just need a voice and a story that’s yours.

Write about the patient you couldn’t help. The mentor who said the right thing at the right time. The mistake that still wakes you up sometimes. The small moment that reminded you why you do this work.

Tell the story of how you’re still becoming the doctor you want to be.

Because Medicine Is a Story

And if we don’t tell it, someone else will—less accurately, less humanely, and with far less compassion. The people best equipped to tell the story of medicine well are the ones living it.

So tell it.

And tell it better than anyone else can.