The Necessary Reconciliation between Evidence Based Medicine and Narrative Medicine
Maria Caterina Salvini, Luigina Mortari

Abstract
Analyzing a question about medicine (is evidence based medicine the best alternative in dealing with patients?), through an epistemological and hermeneutical approach the paper comes to an ethical answer. Patients are studied by clinicians as objects of a diagnostic investigation, while they are the subjects living their life and enduring illnesses. The paper argues that healthcare professionals (physicians, surgeons, nurses, etc.) should employ a more personalized approach in the way they provide care to patients. Scientific explanations of diseases should be integrated by human comprehension regarding what the disease entails for the patient’s life. Rita Charon proposes the narrative method as an efficient and ethic way to provide care to patients, through human virtues such as understanding, empathy and attentive listening. The practice of such virtues encouraged by many pioneers of medicine since Hippocrates, will allow healthcare professionals to be touched and supported in their therapeutic tasks by their patients’ desire for good.

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