What’s in a name?

Abstract

There is a push in healthcare delivery for patients to base their treatment decisions on ‘evidence’ rather than ‘anecdotes’, a term used for individual experiences, and that devalues their epistemological grounding of an individual’s experiences in comparison to statistically-derived scientific knowledge. This chapter discusses how the profound differences between these different forms of knowledge can be teased out through the lens of phenomenological scholars and an investigation of experience and storytelling. It covers how treatment decisions are characterized by choices, of which one is not necessarily superior to another, but rather all are characterized by different risks and benefits, and that such treatment decisions work in the subjunctive mode and as such are inherently narratively structured. Healthcare decision making is about finding a plot. Thus, this chapter explores how helping patients to make ‘better’ decisions may necessitate presenting storylines in which future outcomes are envisioned that take both the intersubjective knowledge of the patient and the scientific knowledge of epidemiology into account.