Illness stories and patient care in the family practice context.

The importance of stories has been receiving great attention in the family and family medicine literature. Less emphasized is the presence of multiple listeners to patients' illness stories in the clinical context. This paper affirms the importance of patients' sharing their illness stories with the various members of the health care system. Through clinical examples and discussion, the paper seeks to sensitize primary care residents and teachers to the community of listeners a patient encounters in an individual clinic visit. Factors influencing patients' selective disclosure of their illness stories are identified. Methods of enhancing greater communication among the recipients of patients' illness stories are proposed.