Patricia Stanley

Patricia Stanley has worked with Rita Charon in the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons since 2003 and is currently on the core faculty team. At Columbia University Medical Center she has facilitated narrative medicine workshops for the pediatric oncology staff and conducts ongoing narrative writing workshops for oncology outpatients, clinicians, and family caregivers. Stanley teaches in the Narrative Medical workshops for health and other professionals from around the world as well as in the medical school where she teaches in the narrative medicine immersion month for fourth year medical students. Stanley also has extensive experience in oral history, introducing narrative and oral history through a video story project for secondary school student/patients, staff and families of the Mount Pleasant/Blythedale UFSD (a school for children with serious chronic illness and disability), and conducting oral history interviews with cancer patients at the Dickstein Cancer Center, in White Plains, NY. Stanley’s publications include “Pediatric Narrative Oncology: Inter-Professional Training to Promote Empathy, Build Teams and Prevent Burnout,” co-authored with Stephen A. Sands and Rita Charon, in The Journal of Supportive Oncology (2008); “The Female Voice in Illness: An Antidote to Alienation, A Call for Connection” in Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies, edited by Sayantani Das Gupta and Marsha Hurst (2007); and “The Patient’s Voice: A Cry in Solitude or a Call for Community,” in Literature and Medicine (2004). She serves on numerous boards of educational and health care organizations, particularly for children. Stanley holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.B.A. with distinction in finance from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, and a master’s degree in health advocacy from Sarah Lawrence College.