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Wolf—living with SLE in a novel

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Abstract

Living with SLE is a major task for the patients and their social environment. In modern health care, quality of life is increasingly incorporated as an important outcome. Studying novels about illness is a new method of exploring quality of life in patients with an illness. In this paper, we use the novel A tribe of women by Hervé Bazin as data to explore how a patient with SLE gives meaning to her illness and how her social environment reacts toward the illness and its treatment. We find that the novel—probably the only one where SLE is a major subject—offers a rich set of data on “living with SLE”. Our findings may be instrumental in encouraging health care providers to explore quality of life in patients with SLE, incorporating self-management in order to improve their quality of life, and in teaching medical students about “medical humanities”.

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Disclosures

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Psychology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Ad A. Kaptein

  2. Department of Biobehavioral Health, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16801, USA

    Joshua M. Smyth

  3. Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA

    Richard S. Panush

Authors
  1. Ad A. Kaptein
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  2. Joshua M. Smyth
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  3. Richard S. Panush
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Correspondence to Ad A. Kaptein.

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Kaptein, A.A., Smyth, J.M. & Panush, R.S. Wolf—living with SLE in a novel. Clin Rheumatol 34, 887–890 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-014-2814-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-014-2814-9

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