Catatonic conundrum.

Differentiating between physical and psychological causes of confusion and psychosis poses a significant challenge to clinicians across all disciplines of medicine. This case report explores the clinical presentation and diagnostic journey of an adolescent girl. She presented to the emergency department with acutely altered behaviour and went on to re-present on multiple occasions over the following months with symptoms suggestive of psychosis. The team faced diagnostic difficulty differentiating between organic and non-organic causes of altered behaviour and mental state. This article explores the challenge faced by the team during the assessment and diagnosis of this patient.

Clinical realism: a new literary genre and a potential tool for encouraging empathy in medical students.

BACKGROUND: Empathy has been re-discovered as a desirable quality in doctors. A number of approaches using the medical humanities have been advocated to teach empathy to medical students. This paper describes a new approach using the medium of creative writing and a new narrative genre: clinical realism. METHODS: Third year students were offered a four week long Student Selected Component (SSC) in Narrative Medicine and Creative Writing. The creative writing element included researching and creating a character with a life-changing physical disorder without making the disorder the focus of the writing. The age, gender, social circumstances and physical disorder of a character were randomly allocated to each student. The students wrote repeated assignments in the first person, writing as their character and including details of living with the disorder in all of their narratives. This article is based on the work produced by the 2013 cohort of students taking the course, and on their reflections on the process of creating their characters. Their output was analysed thematically using a constructivist approach to meaning making. RESULTS: This preliminary analysis suggests that the students created convincing and detailed narratives which included rich information about living with a chronic disorder. Although the writing assignments were generic, they introduced a number of themes relating to illness, including stigma, personal identity and narrative wreckage. Some students reported that they found it difficult to relate to "their" character initially, but their empathy for the character increased as the SSC progressed. CONCLUSION: Clinical realism combined with repeated writing exercises about the same character is a potential tool for helping to develop empathy in medical students and merits further investigation.