Lessons on humanity: The voice of cancer patients through a literary contest.

Abstract

e24189 Background: Most cancer narratives are provided by skilled American and British writers (Broyard, Hitchens, Jobs, Kalanithi, Pausch, Sacks, Sontag or Wishart). This paper highlights the voice of ordinary Latin American patients who wrote about their experience. Methods: Between February 2, 2019 and March 3, 2019, the first author encouraged cancer patients to narrate their experience with the disease for an online literary contest (“ www.oncologiaesperanzadora.com ”). After studying all submissions, we grouped attitudes, feelings, metaphors and descriptions used in different domains related to the course of the disease. A text-mining study was conducted to identify the context of keywords in each of the domains. Results: In total, 224 literary works were submitted to the contest. Characteristics of the population: sex F/M: 184/40; age at time of contest: 53 yo (18-82); time between diagnosis and submission to contest: 8 y (1-73); country of origin: Argentina (201), other countries (23); diagnosis: breast (130), hematological (15), colorectal (13), melanoma (6), lung (5), head and neck (5), kidney (3), other (47). The table shows keywords found in each of the domains. Conclusions: 1) Cancer patients are willing to share their story if they are given the opportunity. 2) Through the narratives of the disease, it is possible to study its impact on patients’ lives and the different coping strategies. 3) Reading the experience of patients with the disease in their own voice is a valuable instrument for medical education. [Table: see text]