The original empathy machine: five books to illuminate the patient experience

To be alive, writes Susan Sontag, is to hold “dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.”1 Even those of us fortunate enough to enjoy good health will, sooner or later, be obliged to spend some time in “that other place.”1 Healthcare professionals, who bear witness to the vulnerability of body and mind, know this inevitability perhaps better than anyone.

Many innovative ideas exist for helping medical students understand what it means to reside “in the kingdom of the sick,” from an age simulation suit that allows its wearer to experience the changes in mobility associated with ageing to virtual reality consultations.2 In the push to develop novel ways to foster empathy, however, the novel itself is, in fact, overlooked. The general practitioner and author Gavin Francis describes how books have “nudged [him] towards a more intimate understanding of those way stations of life [he’ll] never undergo.”3 Fiction and memoir allow us to know individuals both pre-disease and post-disease, to witness their conversations with family, to appreciate the ways in which sickness impacts their lives. “Reading tells us about other lives that we didn’t even know to consider,” writes the GP Margaret McCartney; not just about other lives, but about the other parts of lives we do not see.4

Before starting medical school, I worked in publishing, at a literary agency where my job involved reviewing submissions sent in by hopeful authors. In the wake of …