Dr. Suzanne Koven on Why Storytelling Matters in Medicine

You can also check out this episode on Spotify!

Our stories live in our bodies.

No one knows this better than Dr. Suzanne Koven, a master storyteller and primary care doctor at Harvard Medical School. In caring for patients for 30 years, Dr. Koven learned that patients are more than a set of organs.

“There is nothing that I can think of, there is no kind of testing, there is no sort of physiology or pharmacology that is more essential to clinical skill than the ability to elicit, interpret and communicate someone else’s story.”

It turns out that Dr. Koven has a story, too. Despite her accomplishments and accolades, as a young woman Dr. Koven felt like an imposter—a surprisingly common sentiment for career-oriented females. Her memoir, Letter to a Young Female Physician, is a series of personal essays that reveals the importance of identifying negative self-talk. The book is a must-read for women physicians and for anyone experiencing self-doubt. It’s also part of the reason she became the inaugural writer-in-residence at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, helping other physicians explore the art of listening, writing, and authoring our own narratives.

On this episode of Beyond the Prescription, Dr. Koven discusses with Dr. McBride how her own process of self-discovery improved her own health. Her humility and humor are just what the doctor ordered.

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The transcript of our conversation is here!

Dr. McBride: Hello, and welcome to my office. I'm Dr. Lucy McBride, and this is "Beyond the Prescription." The show where I talk with my guests like I do my patients, pulling the curtain back on what it means to be healthy, redefining health as more than the absence of disease. As a primary care doctor for over 20 years, I've realized that patients are much more than their cholesterol and their weight. That we are [00:00:30] the integrated sum of complex parts. Our stories live in our bodies. I'm here to help people tell their story, to find out, are they okay, and for you to imagine and potentially get healthier from the inside out. You can subscribe to my weekly newsletter at lucymcbride.com/newsletter and to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, let's get into it and go beyond the [00:01:00] prescription.

Today's guest is the kind of doctor I aspired to be when I was a young girl. She's someone I actually wish I had known along my arduous journey in medicine because she's a real healer and I could have used her. Suzanne is a primary care doctor. She's been practicing at Harvard Medical School and at the Mass General Hospital for over 30 years. She's now doing really important work as the inaugural writer in residence at the Mass General Hospital, as an essayist, [00:01:30] writer, and someone who conducts workshops and panels, talking about narrative and storytelling in medicine, women's health, and mental healthcare. Her essay collection was published in 2021. It's called "Letter to a Young Female Physician." I think many of us look back at our younger selves and think we have some pearls of wisdom, some advice, and that's what Suzanne is doing now for us, for me today. Suzanne, I needed you back when I was a [00:02:00] young pup struggling to find my way in medical school and residency. It was hard as a woman, as a pregnant person, and as a person who struggled herself with perfectionism and imposter syndrome. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Thank you so much for joining me.

Suzanne: And I'm thrilled to be here, Lucy. I needed me when I was young too.

Dr. McBride: Tell me about that. What was it about your youth that made you need someone like you are today?

Suzanne: Well, [00:02:30] when I wrote the New England Journal essay "Letter to a Young Female Physician" that became the title essay of my book, what I did was the essay is framed in the form of a letter to my younger self, my ...