Autori e attori medici. Storie di vita e di malattia tra realtà e finzione

This essay compares two didactic practices used in medical training: that of the medical simulation based on interaction with actors playing the role of standardised patients and the Patientvorstellung that Viktor von Weizsäcker, in the guise of “author/director”, realised in class through dialogue with his patients. They are united by the centrality they recognise in the patients’ clinical and biographical stories, which become, in one case, a ‘script’ to be acted out and, in the other, the material from which Weizsäcker constructed the narrative on which he based his lectures. By examining the way in which patients’ life and illness stories are understood and used in these two teaching practices, we will reflect on the significance of the interweaving of reality and fiction that they create in an attempt to explore the heuristic and formative potential of the doctor-patient relationship.