Introductory essay by Rita Charon

I am honored to welcome readers into this Special Issue on Narrative Medicine for the Swedish Journal of Social Medicine. We authors propose a storied conception of health care, in full view of the experiences of those who suffer illness and those who are trained to help them. Years ago, a group of clinicians and scholars at Columbia University in New York fashioned an approach to patient care that strengthened the narrative dimensions of illness and care. They named it narrative medicine. Narrative medicine invites ways of knowing from literature, history, and philosophy and creative fields of visual and performative arts into clinical practice.