Editorial - We are all story-tellers.

Story telling is a human universal. It is as old as language. Creating and relating narratives form an integral part of how physicians understand and communicate about our patients and their diseases. We ask our patients to help us develop their story ('tell me about when all of this first started'), and then we tell their story back to them to facilitate our understanding ('let me just check I understood; this is how things have progressed'). We use individual patients to anchor our learning in medicine; conditions are better recalled when they are attached to a specific people. Thus, we write case vignettes to improve understand when we teach others.