Oliver Hodge

Exploring Grief through Story: A Literary Approach to Humanistic Medical Education

Oliver Hodge

Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

oliver.hodge2@nhs.net

Grief is a universal yet profoundly personal experience, often encountered in healthcare. Despite its ubiquity, medical students and practitioners frequently report feeling ill-equipped to address grief in clinical practice. This presentation advocates for the integration of literature into medical education as a means to deepen understanding and foster a more humanistic approach to patient care. Using Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers [1] as a focal text, this project explores how literary narratives and metaphor can illuminate the complexities of the grieving process. Combining qualitative insights from medical student surveys and an interview with the author, the study examines the role of literature in cultivating empathy, emotional resilience, and effective communication. The findings reveal a significant gap in current medical curricula regarding grief education, highlighting the need for innovative approaches to prepare students for this essential aspect of their future roles. Literature, with its capacity to convey nuanced emotional landscapes, offers a unique avenue for bridging this gap. By engaging with metaphor-rich narratives, medical students can explore the multidimensional nature of grief, fostering greater insight into patients’ experiences. Furthermore, literary works encourage reflective practice, enabling learners to critically examine their own responses to loss and develop strategies for supporting bereaved individuals with sensitivity and compassion. This presentation aligns with global efforts to integrate medical and health humanities into education, emphasising the importance of balancing technical proficiency with the human dimensions of care. It situates grief studies within a broader interdisciplinary framework, drawing attention to the sociocultural and ethical dimensions of medicine that are often overlooked. Ultimately, this work calls for a reimagined approach to medical education—one that leverages the power of literature to humanise the practice of medicine, equipping future clinicians with the skills to navigate grief in diverse cultural and clinical contexts. Through this lens, storytelling becomes a vital tool in shaping compassionate, reflective, and patient-centred healthcare professionals.

REFERENCE

Porter M. Grief is the Thing with Feathers. London: Faber & Faber; 2015.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Oliver Hodge is a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the Royal Free Hospital and an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at UCL Medical School. He earned a First-Class Honours degree in Medical Humanities from the University of Bristol, where he was awarded the Oakhill Prize for his dissertation on the portrayal of grief in literature. This foundation informs his ongoing commitment to integrating the humanities into medical education. With an extensive background in palliative care, Dr Hodge worked as a Clinical Fellow at Thames Hospice, supporting inpatient and community services and running an advance care planning clinic. This experience deepened his understanding of the human dimensions of healthcare, particularly empathy and communication in addressing illness, grief, and loss. Dr. Hodge has delivered a medical humanities mini-series for hospice staff and students, focusing on the role of literature in exploring the complexities of illness and loss within the human experience. His research has been presented at international conferences, including AMEE 2019 and the Palliative Care Congress in 2023. As a medical educator, he is dedicated to equipping future clinicians with the tools to navigate the emotional intricacies of patient care with compassion and reflection.