The Benshi

I have a Letter in Science Magazine this week (Dec. 6 issue).  It presents (rather concisely) my agenda for the near future — to introduce the idea of “Narrative Training” at the very beginning levels of the science world.  This will also be the message of my Opening Plenary on January 3 at the meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Austin.

TELL ME A STORY.  That’s what it’s all about in the end.

MILKING THE CERF THING

As if it wasn’t enough to run a successful event, I apparently felt the need to tell the whole world about our CERF panel last month. But why not — it exemplified everything I’ve been learning for the past quarter century.

In the workshops I run with physicians and the Society for Hospital Leadership we do an exercise (that I learned from my good buddy Maggi Cary) where we have the doctors, “Tell the story of the one day you felt all your years of training coming together to enable you to do something significant.” For most of them it’s an E.R. experience and their stories are amazing.

I was asked the other day what that experience would be for me. The answer is that CERF panel. It was a synthesis of all my 25 years of narrative training. And that’s why I felt it was important enough to write up for Science.