RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 A happy doctor's escape from narrative: reflection in Saturday JF Medical Humanities JO J Med Humanit FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics SP 2 OP 6 DO 10.1136/medhum-2011-010129 VO 38 IS 1 A1 Catherine Belling YR 2012 UL http://mh.bmj.com/content/38/1/2.abstract AB The humanities have, in their application to medicine, become almost synonymous with narrative. When medical education turned to ‘reflection’ as a means to nurture coherent and ethical professional identity, interventions tended to take narrative as their primary form. Even while promoting ‘mindfulness’ as complete engagement in the present moment, proponents of reflection sometimes subsume reflection under the category ‘narrative’. The author offers a reading of Ian McEwan's novel Saturday, the account of the thoughts of a London surgeon over the course of one day, attending to the novel's reflective and lyrical as well as its narrative passages, in order to suggest that, rather than grouping the various forms that constitute ‘literature’ into a single instrumental method for producing more professional and ethical doctors, it might be valuable to attend to the various modes that constitute literary discourse, of which narrative is only one.