Storytelling and narrative allows us to understand ourselves and the world around us.
What I’m writing in 2025
I wrote an Op-Ed ‘When Politics Overrides Nurse Workforce Diversity and Patient Care’ discussing DEI and the role I think Nurses should play in explaining what it really is to people.
One fundamental problem is the deliberate misinterpretation of DEI initiatives by some conservative commentators, who claim these policies unfairly disadvantage white men or compromise standards by favoring diversity over merit. In reality, DEI is not about quotas or special treatment—it is about ensuring that everyone has equal access to opportunities and support.
I wrote an essay entitled ‘The Paradox of Peace’ for the Gandhi Alliance Writing for Peace and placed third (which I’m especially proud of since I basically ignored the prompt and focused on how violence is justified).
There exists a tension between peace and justice, The former having been co-opted by oppressors to mean subservient and obedient. Peace must be grounded in social justice, equal rights, and individual liberties, lest it is at risk of being a tool for more powerful groups to oppress marginalized ones through violence
Elizabeth Hanna
Elizabeth should be sick of writing. After her doctoral dissertation, and charting on thousands of patients as a nurse practitioner, she should hate it. Instead, she dusted off atrophied creative writing muscles during the COVID-19 pandemic, using storytelling to escape the chaos of healthcare and reconnect with her love of the written word.
Creative writing is a new endeavor, but academia and her past life as a researcher/ activist served as a prep course of sorts. She has contributed to peer-reviewed nursing journals, co-authored a major report on junk food advertising to children, and ghostwrote a Daily Mail piece on unethical marketing to kids (for a pittance as a starving grad student in London). Her letters to the editor that have appeared in The Independent (voicing opposition to the Iraq War), The Los Angeles Times (chronicling the grim realities of working in healthcare during the pandemic), and she had a recent op-ed about DEI appear in the American Journal of Nursing.
The ‘genre-curious’ Elizabeth writes Historical Fiction, Commercial Fiction, Mysteries, Dark Humor, and Young Adult, using each as a vehicle for exploring culturally charged issues facing society today, from sexism and identity to the messy, ongoing work of being authentic to oneself.
When not writing or working, Elizabeth is a trained Yoga and Pilates instructor and enjoys physical movement. After living and working in the UK for over a decade, she now calls Utah home, where she lives with her adored and adoring husband, their two daughters, three dogs, backyard ducks, and a cat that rules them all.
(for more a more in depth bio - see Bio or click here)
The Power of Narrative
What purpose does language serve, and how did humans develop the ability to use it? We are not unique in our ability to communicate with others of our species, but we have certain defining features that set us apart. Language empowers us to communicate complex and abstract concepts. It facilitates cooperation between individuals and groups (as well as deception and conflict). It also enables us to express elaborate ideas, real or imagined, with others, changing the way they see the world or letting them glimpse into our reality.
Stories are arguably the most effective way to communicate our inner-world, ideas, and values. Studying history as rote memorization of dates is nowhere as effective as hearing first-hand accounts (or even fictional ones) of events. Stories activate dopamine, cortisol, and oxytocin, and we are programmed to remember them longer and in more detail (Kelly, 2016). Stories are engaging and transport us from this world into another. Human intelligence and storytelling evolved simultaneously, an Ouroboros feeding off of itself. Storytelling is a biological imperative for humans.
As a clinician, returning to creative writing has allowed me to do two things. First, I can carve out a space to process my experiences, both positive and negative, and make sense of them. As an educator, I internalized Kolb’s learning cycle. Writing serves as the last step in this cycle, Reflection. Second, it has allowed me to understand the importance of my patients’ stories in their journey. Medicine rarely allows for or encourages providers to sit and listen to a patient tell “their story” meaningfully, particularly if it contains details not considered clinically relevant. Through creative writing (my outlet for stress and maintaining mental well-being) I struck upon narrative medicine and have discovered that something that comes naturally for me (talking and listening to people) is a tool for enhancing patient care and increasing my job satisfaction.
Check out my Substack, it’s a mix of health policy, politics, and anything else I feel like writing about in the moment.
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